The Buzz

Hospitality Lighting: 4 Ways to Create a Better Guest Experience

Posted: May 22, 2023
By: Kerry McMahon

Modern lighting encompasses much more than just illuminating spaces. Over the past decade, numerous innovations in lighting have emerged, accompanied by a deeper understanding of the impact lighting can have on our well-being. Perhaps nowhere are the benefits of lighting more apparent than in the hospitality industry.

Here are four advantages that a hospitality lighting upgrade can have for hoteliers and their guests.

1. Flexible lighting makes guests happier

There’s a mountain of evidence that proves that when people have control over the lighting in their hotel room (or hospital room, classroom, office, etc.) they are more content. And modern lighting provides guests with more control than ever before.

Today, guests can control the intensity and adjust the color temperature of their lights, intuitively knowing that warm, yellowish light creates a relaxing ambiance, while a bright white light is a great energy booster when it’s time to get to work.

Providing guests with a variety of controllable lighting options makes their customized space feel more like home.

2. Lighting helps set a mood for every space

Hotels offer various spaces for guests to use outside of their rooms, including business centers, fine dining areas, ballrooms, and lobby seating, each with different lighting needs that cater to guests’ expectations for their experience.

The lobby, where first impressions are made, often requires energizing cool-white light during the day and a warmer color in the evening to match the slower pace. Many options are available that offer this flexibility within the same lighting fixture. As for lobby seating areas, these can be more productive gathering spaces when ambient sound is controlled. The Shaper Series of pendant lights by Cooper Lighting Solutions features striking contemporary luminaires crafted with industry-leading acoustic materials that actually absorb sound!

The same needs arise in dining areas (bright for brunch, dim for dining) and ballrooms (bright for meetings, dim for receptions). But these spaces often require different fixtures. Dining areas can be bold, modern, playful, while ballrooms may require more subdued fixtures.

And we can’t forget exterior lighting, some of the most noticed lighting for any building. Today’s architectural accent lighting can highlight special architectural features of a hotel, or it can be used to minimize imperfections. The actual lighting fixtures themselves can add architectural interest, too.

From pathways to pools, gardens to gathering spots, there are commercial outdoor lighting solutions to create stunning nighttime effects to impress your guests and passersby. Does your pool have lights? Are the trees or seating areas around the pool creating the mood your guests expect when relaxing? Perhaps you have a walkway to a seating area around a firepit. Every space can be made to feel special with the right lighting design and fixtures.

3. Lighting can kill germs. Really.

Although disinfectant lighting technology was initially focused on medical environments, technological advancements and price points have made it possible to implement them across a wide variety of facilities, including hotels, classrooms, and office buildings.

Germicidal UV-C lighting kills germs on surfaces and in the air. It works by using ultraviolet radiant energy to inactivate bacteria, mold spores, fungi, viruses, even COVID-19. In hotels, it’s often used in dining areas, gyms, restrooms, and even guest rooms. Knowing a facility has taken this extra step to fight disease is a comforting feeling to guests and employees.

A row of cars parked in a multi-level city parking garage. Cooper Lighting Quadcast fixtures provide plenty of light for the area.

4. Guests feel safer in well-lit spaces

What do the places we find scariest have in common? They’re typically poorly lit: parking garages, public stairwells, pretty much any deserted place at night.

Conversely, adequate lighting makes hotel guests feel safer.

Do your hotel’s public spaces have enough light fixtures to fully illuminate the space? Is the luminosity bright enough? Does your maintenance crew make keeping the lights in good working order a priority? There are plenty of site lighting options that help keep your space safe, while saving energy and maintenance costs.

Your Hospitality Lighting Partner

Lighting remains one of the most critical areas of design, a medium with the potential to inspire, empower, and sell. However, with so many options, you need a partner to listen to your needs, provide lighting design and analysis, and plan your lighting projects effectively. Combine our expertise with Cooper Lighting’s hospitality lighting solutions and we take the worry away.

Speak with lighting & electrical distribution experts today.