Contact Us
© 2025 Living Spaces Interiors. All rights reserved.
Maitidevi, Kathmandu
Hospitality & Hotel Projects
Hospitality & Hotel Design
At Living Spaces Interiors, hospitality design occupies a distinct space in our practice — one that demands a different kind of thinking. A home must feel personal. An office must feel productive. A hotel, restaurant, or hospitality venue must feel like an experience — one that guests choose to return to, remember long after they leave, and recommend to everyone they know.
Our hospitality portfolio spans luxury hotels, boutique guesthouses, hotel lobbies, restaurant interiors, café spaces, and hospitality suites. In each project, the guest experience is the brief — everything else follows from that.
Clients & Projects
| Client | Type | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| An IHG Hotel, Kathmandu | International Luxury Hotel | Interior design collaboration — guest experience environments, public area styling, and hospitality suite design in partnership with the IHG global brand standards team |
| Sage Nepal — Hospitality Spaces | Corporate Hospitality | Client hospitality suite, executive lounge, and formal reception — designed to international enterprise hospitality standards |
| BigMovies Nepal | Entertainment & Leisure | Cinema lobby, concession area, and premium lounge design — leisure environment for an urban entertainment audience |
| Boutique Guesthouse, Thamel | Boutique Hospitality | Full interior design for a 14-room boutique guesthouse — reception, lounge, breakfast room, and guest room typologies |
| Restaurant Interior, Lazimpat | Fine Dining | Full restaurant interior — dining room, bar area, private dining room, and kitchen pass design |
| Café Interior, Jhamsikhel | Specialty Coffee & Café | Brand-aligned café interior — seating layout, counter design, material palette, and lighting for a specialty coffee environment |
What Makes Hospitality Design Different
Hospitality interiors are judged by standards that residential and corporate design never face. A guest is not just using a space — they are forming a memory. The quality of the light when they walk in. The softness of the seating. The smell of the materials. The acoustics of the dining room. Whether the bathroom feels generous or merely adequate. These are the details that determine whether a guest leaves satisfied or leaves delighted.
We approach every hospitality project with this understanding at the centre. Every decision — from the height of the reception desk to the thread count of the upholstery — is made by asking: how will this feel to a guest experiencing it for the first time?
Our Hospitality Design Services
| Service | Description |
|---|---|
| Hotel & Guesthouse Design | Full interior design for hotel properties — lobby, public areas, guest rooms, suites, F&B outlets, and back-of-house coordination |
| Restaurant Interior Design | Dining environments designed for atmosphere, operational efficiency, and brand expression — from intimate fine dining to high-volume casual |
| Café & Bar Design | Specialty café and bar interiors that balance brand identity, customer flow, and the specific technical requirements of food and beverage service |
| Lobby & Reception Design | First-impression spaces for hotels and hospitality venues — designed to establish the property's character within the first 30 seconds of arrival |
| Banquet & Event Space Design | Flexible event environments designed for multiple configurations — weddings, corporate events, private dining — with appropriate acoustic and lighting consideration |
| Corporate Hospitality Suites | Executive lounge and client hospitality environments for corporate properties — where business entertainment meets design standards |
| Entertainment & Leisure Interiors | Cinemas, clubs, and leisure venues — high-traffic environments designed for energy, atmosphere, and operational durability |
| FF&E Specification | Furniture, Fixtures & Equipment specification for hospitality projects — sourcing, procurement, and installation coordination across all guest-facing elements |
Design Principles for Hospitality Spaces
| Principle | What It Means in Practice |
|---|---|
| The Arrival Sequence | Every hospitality project begins at the moment of arrival — the approach, the entrance, the threshold. We design the arrival sequence as a choreographed transition from the outside world into the property's world. This first minute sets the guest's emotional register for everything that follows |
| Layered Atmosphere | Great hospitality spaces work at multiple distances. From across the room, the composition draws you in. Up close, the materials reward examination. In person, the furniture is comfortable, the acoustics are right, and the light flatters. We design at all three scales simultaneously |
| Operational Realism | Beautiful hospitality interiors that cannot be cleaned, maintained, or operated efficiently are a liability. Every material, every surface, every furniture specification is reviewed for its operational implications — not just its aesthetic contribution |
| Brand Without Cliché | Hospitality design in Nepal often defaults to predictable cultural references — thangka motifs, dhaka patterns, prayer wheel accents used decoratively without meaning. We work with cultural identity more carefully — finding genuine material and spatial references that feel rooted rather than applied |
| Light as the Primary Material | In hospitality design, lighting is not an afterthought — it is the first material we specify. The quality, colour temperature, directionality, and control of light determines more about how a space feels than any other single decision. We commission lighting design as a discrete discipline on every hospitality project |
| Acoustic Design | The most common complaint about restaurants and hospitality venues is noise. We address acoustic performance at the design stage — specifying absorptive materials, managing hard surface ratios, and designing ceiling geometry with sound in mind — rather than solving it retrospectively with unsightly panels |
Working with International Brand Standards
Our collaboration with IHG — one of the world's largest hotel companies — required us to work within a highly detailed brand standards framework while delivering a space that felt genuinely local and specific to Kathmandu. This experience sharpened our understanding of how international hospitality brands operate and what they require from a design partner.
For any hospitality project operating under a franchise or brand license — international hotel groups, restaurant chains, or branded F&B concepts — we have the experience to navigate brand compliance requirements without sacrificing design quality or local authenticity.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you design individual guest rooms as well as public areas?
Yes. For hotel projects we provide full interior design across all guest-facing environments — including guest room and suite typologies, bathroom design, corridor treatments, and all public areas. We develop room type specifications that can be replicated across multiple floors with appropriate variation.
Can you work with an existing hotel that needs a refresh rather than a full redesign?
Absolutely. Partial renovations and phased refreshes are a significant part of our hospitality practice. We assess which elements have remaining life and which need replacement, and develop a phased programme that allows the property to continue operating throughout the works.
How do you approach restaurant design differently from hotel design?
Restaurants are operationally more demanding than most hospitality environments — the ratio of covers to square footage, the kitchen relationship to the dining room, the acoustic performance under full occupancy, and the durability requirements of surfaces under daily service conditions all require specialist consideration. We treat restaurant design as a distinct discipline within our hospitality practice.
Do you handle the furniture procurement for hospitality projects?
Yes. FF&E (Furniture, Fixtures & Equipment) specification and procurement management is a standard part of our hospitality service. For larger properties, we develop a complete FF&E schedule and manage supplier relationships, delivery coordination, and installation supervision.
The Design Strategy
Case Study
Hospitality design is the most demanding discipline in interior design. It is the only category where the space must perform beautifully for strangers — hundreds or thousands of different people with different tastes, different expectations, and different reasons for being there — every single day, for years without significant change.
This case study documents how Living Spaces approaches hospitality projects — drawing on our experience across hotel collaborations, restaurant interiors, café environments, leisure spaces, and corporate hospitality suites in Kathmandu.
Client Profile — Hospitality Segment
| Detail | Description |
|---|---|
| Client Types | International hotel groups, boutique guesthouses, independent restaurants, specialty cafés, corporate hospitality operators, and leisure & entertainment venues |
| Notable Client | An IHG Hotel, Kathmandu — one of the world's leading international hospitality groups, operating under global brand standards across 6,000+ properties worldwide |
| Guest Profile | International business travellers, regional leisure guests, Kathmandu's upper-tier domestic hospitality audience, and corporate entertainment clients |
| Core Brief | Spaces that feel premium, local, and operationally robust — where the guest experience is consistently excellent and the interior continues to perform years after handover |
| Key Tension | International brand standards vs. local authenticity — guests expect a globally consistent quality level while also wanting a space that feels genuinely rooted in Nepal |
| Operational Constraint | Hospitality venues operate 7 days a week, often 24 hours. Renovation and fit-out must be phased with minimal disruption to live operations wherever existing properties are involved |
The IHG Collaboration — Working Within Global Brand Standards
Our engagement with an IHG hotel property in Kathmandu was our most technically demanding hospitality brief to date. IHG operates one of the most detailed brand standards frameworks in the international hotel industry — every dimension, material category, lighting specification, and FF&E type is governed by global documentation running to hundreds of pages.
Working within that framework while delivering a space that felt genuinely Nepali required us to find the space between mandatory compliance and genuine design opportunity. IHG's standards define what must be present and what minimum quality level it must meet. They do not define how the space feels, what the material palette communicates, or how the local cultural context is expressed. That space — between the mandatory and the optional — is where the design lives.
The principle we established early: meet the standard everywhere, exceed it where it matters most, and use every degree of creative freedom available to make the space feel unmistakably Nepali without resorting to decoration.
Our Methodology for Hospitality Projects
| Phase | What We Do | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| Guest Journey Mapping | Before any spatial planning, we map the complete guest journey — arrival, check-in, circulation to room, dining, leisure, checkout. Every touchpoint is identified and prioritised by its emotional impact on the guest experience | 2–3 days |
| Brand & Standards Review | For branded properties, full review of applicable brand standards documents. For independent properties, competitive benchmarking against the relevant hospitality tier in Kathmandu and the broader South Asia region | 3–4 days |
| Site & Operational Audit | Detailed assessment of the physical space — natural light patterns across all hours, acoustic characteristics, service route analysis, utility locations, structural constraints, and existing elements with remaining design life | 2–3 days |
| Concept Development | Narrative-led concept — a clear story about what the space is, what it feels like, and what it communicates. This concept becomes the filter for every design decision that follows. Presented with mood boards, material directions, and spatial sketches | 7–10 days |
| Schematic Design | Floor plans, furniture layouts, preliminary material schedules, and lighting concept for all guest-facing areas. Key areas — lobby, primary restaurant, guest room typologies — developed to a higher level of detail for client review | 10–14 days |
| FF&E Specification | Complete Furniture, Fixtures & Equipment schedule — every item specified with supplier, lead time, cost, and installation requirement. Procurement managed against the project programme to ensure no delays at fit-out stage | 7–10 days |
| Lighting Design | Dedicated lighting design for all guest-facing spaces — fixture specification, positioning, control scheme, and colour temperature calibration for day and evening modes. Commissioned as a distinct design discipline | 5–7 days |
| Execution & Supervision | On-site supervision throughout construction — coordination of civil works, specialist trades, FF&E delivery, and installation. Daily site presence during critical phases; formal weekly progress report to client | Per programme |
| Pre-Opening Styling | Final styling across all public areas — plants, artwork, decorative objects, table settings, bed dressing — the layer that transforms a completed construction project into a finished hospitality experience | 3–5 days |
| Soft Opening Support | On-call design support during the soft opening period — addressing any operational issues that require design resolution before the property opens to the general public | 1–2 weeks |
Key Design Decisions — Hospitality Projects
The Lobby as Decompression Chamber
Kathmandu's streets are intense — noise, traffic, density, sensory overload. A hotel lobby in this city has a specific job: to provide immediate relief from the outside and transport the guest into the property's world within seconds of crossing the threshold. Every lobby we design for a Kathmandu hospitality project treats the transition from street to interior as its primary design problem. The materiality softens, the acoustic level drops, the light warms and dims, the pace slows. This transition — which takes approximately 90 seconds to complete — is the most important experience we design.
Cultural Authenticity Without Decoration
Nepal has a rich material and craft heritage — stone, timber, hand-loomed textiles, metalwork, ceramics. The predictable hospitality response is to apply these as decoration: a thangka on a wall, a brass vessel in a corner, a dhaka cushion on a generic sofa. We pursue a different approach — integrating Nepali material culture into the architectural fabric of the space itself. Lokta paper applied to ceiling panels. Hand-carved stone used as a structural threshold rather than an ornament. Hand-woven textiles commissioned as full wall treatments rather than scatter cushions. The cultural reference becomes spatial rather than decorative.
Durability Specification for High-Traffic Hospitality
A hotel lobby receives more daily contact than a residential living room receives in a year. Every surface, finish, and furniture piece must be specified with this in mind. We apply a hospitality-grade durability standard to all FF&E — upholstery with minimum 100,000 rub count, surface finishes tested for chemical resistance (cleaning products in hospitality environments are significantly stronger than domestic equivalents), and furniture joinery specified for structural performance under daily repeated use.
Project Benchmarks — Hospitality Portfolio
| Metric | Benchmark |
|---|---|
| International Brand Collaboration | IHG hotel group — one of the world's largest hospitality companies with 6,000+ properties globally |
| Property Types | Luxury hotel, boutique guesthouse, fine dining restaurant, specialty café, corporate hospitality suite, and cinema & leisure venue |
| Smallest Hospitality Project | Specialty café — 600 sq ft counter, seating, and brand environment |
| Largest Hospitality Project | IHG hotel — multi-area engagement across lobby, public spaces, and hospitality suites |
| Phased Delivery | All hotel and guesthouse projects delivered in phases to allow continued guest operations throughout renovation works |
| FF&E Managed | Full FF&E procurement and installation coordination on all hotel and restaurant projects — zero delayed handovers due to procurement failure |
| Client Satisfaction | 100% of hospitality clients rate Living Spaces' delivery as meeting or exceeding expectations — formally recognised by Sage Nepal and IMS for design quality and professionalism |
The Difference Between a Good Hotel and an Unforgettable One
We have stayed in many hotels designed by studios that prioritised photography over experience. The spaces look extraordinary in the campaign images — they are lit perfectly, styled precisely, and photographed from the exact angle that makes every proportion feel ideal. But the moment a guest arrives, the illusion collapses. The seating is uncomfortable. The lighting cannot be adjusted. The room feels smaller than it appeared. The acoustic environment is hostile. The materials are already showing wear three months after opening.
The hospitality spaces we design are the opposite — they are designed to be experienced, not photographed. When they are photographed, they look excellent precisely because the design decisions that make them work experientially are also the ones that make them read well visually. Proportion, light, material quality, and thoughtful detail translate to both.
An unforgettable hospitality space makes a guest feel something they did not expect to feel. That is the only brief that matters — and it is the one we work from, every time.