Hotels & venues
A wayfinding system that complements the interior design and guides guests from arrival to room.
In short
Hotel wayfinding is the system that takes a guest from the gate to the bedroom door without stopping to ask: arrival, floor and room numbering, the restaurant, bar, spa and events, and the back of house behind them. We design it with your architect and interior designer, install it with our own teams around your guests, and certify it.
Premium hotels and venues. We design wayfinding that works with the architecture and the hotel's identity.
Beautiful, durable, and delivered without disrupting operations.
01The challenge
The usual brief is to make the signage less visible, and most hotels do carry more signs than they need. Smaller, paler and fewer words photographs well, then leaves a guest with a key card in one hand and a suitcase in the other, reading a blank brass plate under a warm downlight.
Nothing in a hotel is read more often than a bedroom number, and nothing is left later in the design. Odds and evens that swap sides between wings, and ranges missing at the lift lobby, send guests the full length of a corridor the wrong way.
A suite called one thing in the corridor, another on the function sheet and a third on the website is the commonest reason a guest stands in the right place and asks whether it is the right place. It is cheap to fix on paper and expensive once anything is made.
Most hotel work happens while the hotel is trading. Installation has to follow the occupancy and events calendar, fix once into silk wallcovering or period joinery, and leave no trace for the guest checking in an hour later.
On an estate the journey starts at the public road. Drivers at 40 km/h and guests walking to dinner need the same names at very different sizes, and the car park, where people get out and look around, is usually the place with the least signage.
02What we deliver
Design, project management and installation by our own teams, with one accountable supplier from first drawings to the signed certificate.
Entrance markers, junction directionals and named car parks sized for a driver, then pedestrian signs at every car park exit giving building, direction and walking time. Lit or retroreflective where arrivals happen after dark.
One oversized numeral in each lift lobby, read from inside the car as the doors open. Rooms numbered from the floor, odds and evens held to one side through every wing, and ranges stated at every decision point.
Public layers found by a resident leaving a lift and by someone in off the street. Event floors get one confident read from the front door for the crowd arriving together at ten to nine.
Brass, bronze, timber, back-painted glass and flat-cut lettering, engraved or hand-filled, matched to the door furniture and chosen to age the way the interior ages. Key signs are sampled in the real finish before anything is cut.
We specify by light reflectance value, so lettering, plate and wall each keep a real contrast step under warm, low light. Tactile and braille identification goes where it does work: accessible bedrooms, WCs, lift lobbies and stair cores.
Escape routes and fire-fighting equipment to TGD B and ISO 7010, a fire-action notice in every bedroom, plant and riser labelling, and kitchen and housekeeping signage a seasonal member of staff reads on their first shift. Certificates signed off by us.
03How we work
Approvals cut from months to days. The same five stages on every project, so nothing falls between packages.
A wayfinding system and sign family designed to work with your architecture and identity.
Numbering, floor IDs, lift lobbies, car parks and egress, built for how people navigate.
Designed to the strictest accessibility and legislative criteria. Certified on completion.
Stove-enamelled aluminium and other long-life materials, made to spec or above it.
Our own fitting teams, working to complex construction schedules.
04Standards
The standards and regulations this work is designed to. Compliance is the baseline, not an upsell.
05Proof
Brochure · 8 pages
Hotel wayfinding designed to sit inside the interior: room numbering, public spaces, estates and back of house, made and installed by our own teams.
By using fewer signs, better placed, and specifying them by light reflectance value rather than by mood board. Almost every luxury palette has a compliant version: antique bronze with a light infill, a dark plate with satin brass lettering, or timber with a pale engrave. Each keeps the contrast step that Part M and BS 8300 ask for.
Yes. Most hotel work happens in a building that is already trading. Our own installation teams work room by room and floor by floor to your occupancy and events calendar, fixing once into wallcovering and joinery, so guests see finished signage rather than work in progress.
Yes. Our architects and graphic designers work to your interior scheme and your brand guidelines from the first drawing. Designers talking to designers is why our packages average 1.8 rounds to approval, and why approvals take days rather than months.
From the floor, so room 418 tells you it is on level four. Keep odds and evens on the same side of the corridor through every wing, state the room range at the lift lobby and at every corridor junction, and make the numeral legible at arm's length in warm, low light.
At minimum, escape-route and fire-equipment signage to TGD B using ISO 7010 symbols, a fire-action notice in every bedroom, and accessible signage to Part M with BS 8300 as the working reference. We design all of it into the same system as the guest signage and sign off the compliance certificates at handover.
Yes. On a country house estate the grounds usually fail before the interior does. We plan the arrival sequence from the gate: identify the estate, sort guests from deliveries at the first junction, name the car parks, then hand guests over to walking routes with building, direction and walking time.
Yes. At Carton House we worked with MDO Architects in an eighteenth-century house, fixing to patterned wallpaper and period joinery. In a protected structure the fixing positions, the substrate and the making good are agreed before anyone drills, because a hole in the wrong place is an alteration to the structure.
The replacement is specified from the project record, so it matches the original in material, typeface and size without a fresh site measure. Everything we supply carries a 10-year warranty.
07Insights
In a hotel the test of the signage is simple: how rarely does a guest have to stop someone and ask where they are?
On an estate, most of the journey happens outdoors, at two very different speeds. How arrival sequences, materials and light are planned from the gate in.
Drill in the wrong place and you have altered a protected structure. How signage gets consented, fixed and made good in a heritage building.
One room, three names, and a building nobody can follow. What a good room naming convention decides, who should own it, and why it comes before the signs.
A brand book is a policy; Part M and the safety-sign regulations are law. What to do when the approved palette cannot legally carry the sign it has been given.
Months of design are realised or ruined in a fortnight on site. What good installation actually takes: fixings, setting out, live buildings, snagging.
Hotels & venues
Approvals cut from months to days, typically around 20% off the wayfinding package, and one supplier from design to installation.
