Travel Takeaways: Decorating Lessons From a Lavish Paris Hotel

Paris is a designer’s dream. Inspiration oozes from every pore, and beauty lurks around every corner. The Belle Époque is alive and well in the City of Light, and if you care about history, architecture, art and one of the pinnacles of human achievement in creativity, Paris is your place.

On our first and only visit to this wonderful city a decade ago, my wife and I stayed at L’Hotel, Paris, the Rive Gauche haunt of such interesting folk as Oscar Wilde, who famously lived there during the last years of his life. The few days we luxuriated in this enchanted jewel box of a hotel have significantly influenced our interior design sensibilities ever since, and offered lessons that any of us could apply to our own homes.

One glimpse of the entrance and you know you’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto. The rich use of color, extravagant fabrics and elegant furnishings pull one in like a magnet, as these recent photos of the hotel attest.


You can achieve a similar effect in your own home, whether your entry is spacious …


… or compact. You can create anticipation for what’s ahead in any space.


It was 106 degrees when we arrived, so we headed straight for the bar in search of a very tall, very cold glass of white wine. When we asked our bartender what white wines were available, he responded with that Parisian snobbery seemingly reserved for “uncouth, rowdy” Americans. “At L’Hotel,” he sniffed, “we serve only Sancerre.”

After he poured us a glass, we understood why!


The bar and adjoining dining room offered another design lesson. Rich fabrics in deeply saturated shades of red and blue balanced ones in lighter tones of sage green and white. The fearless use of color at L’Hotel invited me to be more courageous myself.


The designer of this fantastically layered and colorful Texas bedroom employed just as much courage and good taste. Even though its sensibility is modern, can you see how it captures the same spirit as our Belle Époque hotel?


In this California home, deep colors and a mix of textures and patterns demonstrates how the design lessons of Paris can be translated to produce something distinctly different.


Most of us have stayed in cheap motels where the rooms are all dull and lifeless clones. They are adequate for sleeping, and that’s about it. But each room at L’Hotel is a unique expression of a soaring design imagination and meticulous attention to detail.

Rich color, patterns and textures all work together, even in this very small space. Instead of overwhelming the room, they make one feel elegantly ensconced. Again, it takes courage and a good eye, but it can be done.


With its lavish mix of rich patterns and colors, this stunning Vancouver bedroom is really a modern iteration of a L’Hotel design.


Note how, as at L’Hotel, white bed linens allow for total abandon in the rest of the room.


There’s a lot going on in L’Hotel’s small spaces, but you’ll notice that they don’t feel cramped. One key is scale. By and large, the furnishings are very small, but they are usually accompanied by one big statement piece. A fabulous mural …


… an enormous Chinese jar …


… or a grand mirror, for instance.


This same principle was put to use in a California show house, where very large-scale foliage was paired with small-scale chairs and a moderate-size chest.


Here a huge painting accompanies small-scale seating, giving an airy and uncrowded feel to a midcentury modern living room in California.


Another lesson from our stay in Paris relates to wallpaper. Nothing adds color, texture and even architectural interest to an otherwise-ordinary room like wallpaper.

Wallpaper was “out” for several years, but I’ve always loved it, and our Paris experience served to reinforce that love. As a result, wallpaper has never been out for me, and I’m glad to see that it’s making a comeback right now in the design world.


I love how architectural interest was created here with wallpaper. Well, maybe not just wallpaper — but it plays a very important role.



In this Manchester, England, home, the breezy, romantic wallpaper design is leavened with a little whimsy.


In New York a classic floral crowns the wainscoting, illustrating L’Hotel’s lesson that even if wallpaper goes out of fashion, it never really goes out of style.


A rich and complex mix of marble, tile and paint takes the L’Hotel bathrooms far beyond simple utility.


Isn’t this Michigan bathroom a vast improvement on plain white walls and pedestrian fixtures?


Same thing with this Minneapolis bath.


The L’Hotel reception room is another example that uses all the great design lessons we got from our little Paris home. No massive, corporate-looking reception desk here. Just a small, refined, human-scaled chamber to welcome guests to this lovely place.

This kind of over-the-top decorating that reaches back to another era may not be your cup of tea. Or you may be like me and be inspired by it. But either way I hope you can appreciate the romance and beauty of this diminutive auberge, and understand why my wife and I think of it when we say to each other, “We’ll always have Paris.”

More: 9 Ways to Conjure a Parisian Bistro in Your Kitchen

URL: Travel Takeaways: Decorating Lessons From a Lavish Paris Hotel http://www.decor-ideas.org/cases-view-id-24097.html