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GW—
59
A
fewminutes’ walk from
Avenue Louise in
Brussels’ St Gilles
district, sits a very brightly
coloured facade among a row of
smartly renovated houses. Walk
through the open doors and
you’ ll find yourself in the world’s
first and only Pantone hotel.
277C, 301C and 2718C don’t
just refer to roomnumbers,
they’re also codes for the
carefully selected colours of the
hotel ’s furniture, textiles and
accessories. Guests choose a
room by combining their
favourite colour with their
mood. The unconventional
design hotel ’s rooms come in
various shades of green, blue,
red, yellow and bronze. For
instance, guests can opt for a
roomwith ‘cheerful and warm’,
‘fresh and stimulating’ or ‘calm
and inspiring’ green. It’s all
about the detail.
The hotel is the brainchild of
Brussels designer Michel
Penneman and architect Olivier
Hannaert. A few years ago,
Penneman bought a bright
orange Pantone bag at an
exhibition. He knew the
company, but only as a
manufacturer of colour codes,
primarily used by designers.
Inspired by the iconic colour
brand, the Belgian went on to
design the hotel ’s interior,
employing a broad range of
colours fromPantone’s palette,
ranging from vivid hues to more
subtle shades.
D E S I G N
A ROOMWITH A HUE
In Brussels, the world’s first hotel with decor based on the Pantone
colour matching system highlights the link between mood and hue
The hotel ’s seven floors and
59 rooms are furnished in
various hues of the seven colours
of the rainbow. The colours
come with exotic names like
Absinthe, Zinfandel, Alabaster
and Zinc. But it’s difficult to
capture colour in its name, so
each room contains a small
chart detailing the colour, its
origins, meaning and effect.
We know that colours can
have symbolic value. They can
trigger countless associations
and feelings and influence our
moods. Ever since we began
painting on cave walls and
colouring clothes and objects,
we’ve tried to identify, classify
and link colours. The pursuit of
knowledge about colour sparked
the development of colour
models. Colours were classified
using terms such as light and
dark, rich or pale, as well as
associations with nature and the
environment. This resulted in
the emergence of a basic colour
order which slowly gained a
more scientific footing.
In 1963, the American
Lawrence Herbert devised an
innovative system based on the
Farbtafeln an den Wänden beschreiben die
jeweilige Wirkung des Pantones, der die
Farbgebung in Ihrem Zimmer bestimmt
Any colour you like, so long as it’s Pantone