Falcon

When upgrading hotel bathrooms, design is obviously important. But just as important is how those bathrooms are going to perform day after day. Hotel ensuites are high use spaces. They’re used every day, cleaned regularly and need to continue looking good and functioning well over time. That means there’s more to consider than finishes and fixtures. Waterproofing, ventilation, maintenance, cleaning and how the bathroom will stand up to ongoing use all need to be thought about from the start.

Choosing finishes for a hotel environment

Hotel bathrooms need materials that can handle regular use and commercial cleaning.

Tiles, grout, surfaces, cabinetry and hardware should be selected with that in mind. It’s about finding the right balance between the look the hotel wants and what is going to work practically.

When making selections, consider:

• How easy is it to clean?
• Will it handle the cleaning products used by housekeeping?
• Is it likely to show wear quickly?
• Can it be repaired or replaced easily if damaged?
• Will it still suit the hotel in five or ten years?

A finish can look great on day one, but the real test is how it holds up after hundreds of guests have used the room.

Fixtures and fittings

Fixtures and fittings also need to be considered beyond how they look.

Reliability, ease of maintenance and access to replacement parts all matter, particularly when the same products are being used across multiple rooms.

For a hotel completing a larger room upgrade, there can be real value in keeping key fixtures and fittings consistent. It can make future maintenance simpler and reduce the number of different replacement parts the hotel needs to manage.

Before making a selection, it’s worth asking whether the product is readily available, whether replacement parts can be sourced and how easy it will be to maintain over its life.

Think about housekeeping and maintenance

The people cleaning and maintaining the rooms know better than anyone which details work and which ones create extra work.

Something as simple as a difficult-to-clean surface, hard to access fitting or poorly considered detail can become an ongoing issue when it’s repeated across a number of rooms.

Before finalising a bathroom design, speak to the people who use and maintain the rooms every day. Ask what causes issues in the existing bathrooms, what takes the most time to clean and what they would change if given the opportunity.

That feedback can help inform practical decisions before the same detail is repeated across 10, 20 or 50 rooms.

Working around hotel operations

For an existing hotel, how the bathrooms are upgraded is just as important as what goes into them.

Taking a large number of rooms offline at once can have a direct impact on hotel operations, so the construction programme should be considered early.

Rooms may be able to be completed in stages, with one floor, wing or group of rooms handed back before work moves into the next area. Access, guest movements, housekeeping, deliveries and disruptive works all need to form part of that planning.

At Falcon Hotel Interiors, this is something we work through early with the hotel team. Understanding occupancy, quieter periods and how the property operates helps us develop a programme around the hotel, rather than expecting the hotel to work around construction.

Look beyond the finished bathroom

When planning a hotel bathroom refurbishment, it’s easy to focus on what guests will see when the project is finished.

But some of the most important decisions happen behind the finished surfaces.

Before starting an upgrade, consider the condition of the existing bathrooms, what has and hasn’t worked previously, how the rooms are cleaned and maintained, how easily products can be replaced and how construction can be staged around hotel operations.

Getting those decisions right early can help deliver bathrooms that look good for guests, perform well over time and are practical for the hotel team to manage.