The Clarion Hotel

New Orleans, Louisiana

New Orleans Design Flavor

The French Quarter inspired the interior spaces for The Clarion Hotel, located in downtown New Orleans. This project entailed redesigning the terrace bar, restaurant, club lounge, lobby, and 759 guest suites, including a Presidential Suite, with a very traditional look and feel.

In Praline’s Restaurant, the concept juxtaposed the green of an inside garden against the bright white rotunda and open beams above. The fan-back chairs echoed palm trees. The backdrop of expansive, hand-painted murals of garden scenes, palm trees, and ferns made the edges of the perimeter, all depicting a garden oasis.

Two rugs were inset into the lobby’s oversized glazed porcelain floor tiles, one with a border and one without. Queen Anne style sofas, loveseats, and a trellis design on the walls and niches matched well with the pale mauve striae wall covering.

In the Spirit of the French Quarter 

For the terrace court, I positioned lanterns down the length of the corridor, which was created to look like a street in the French Quarter. To one side were balconies with wrought iron railings. Off the court, guests step up into the bar where the lighting changed to become moody and sexy, like the nightlife. Upscale fabrics juxtaposed stripes against traditional Persian-looking patterns on the wool Axminster carpets. Here, I used wood and brass details on the handrails and lighting, rather than the wrought iron, to evoke a more sophisticated interior ambiance.

The terrace bar incorporated black granite tabletops, Axminster wool carpets again – this time in a floral pattern – and chairs with a deep mauve stripe. Several of the spaces are cleverly defined through hand-crafted patina-finished iron scrollwork.

The guest suites have a nod to a traditional New Orleans hotel, interspersing the French influence with artwork and screens. In these, I kept the fabrics neutral, adding color in the draperies and carpets. All the spaces from the entrance and lobby through to the Presidential Suite are woven together through the use of common color palettes and finishes.