Corinthian spirit

The Corinthia Hotel in London is home to the capital’s largest urban spa and is 70 per cent fitted with low-energy LED lighting. Ellie Greisen, senior lighting designer at Lighting Design International, talks to Amanda Allen about tight briefs and a client with an aversion to downlights

The Corinthia Hotel London did not enjoy the smoothest of openings. Years in the pipeline, Whitehall’s newest hotel is one-third backed by the Libyan state and, when Libyan assets were frozen in the UK and the US in February this year, the hotel group had to seek HM government’s permission before the Corinthia could begin trading. After several false starts, the hotel finally opened its doors in May, to the relief of all the contractors involved.

Lighting Design International worked on the project for three years, creating lighting concepts for the foyer, ballroom, Court Room, restaurant and the ESPA Life spa. Perhaps the most complex element of the project, the hotel’s subterranean spa, consists of four stories spread across 3,300m² and, notably, downlights had to be kept to a minimum.

“ESPA didn’t want to have any downlights but wanted everything to feel really lush and moody. Everything had to be integrated and concealed, so we used a lot of diffusers to make sure the fittings couldn’t be seen,” says Ellie Greisen, senior lighting designer with Lighting Design International.

Changes of mood

The brief was tight and aimed to create an integrated scheme to encompass the changes of mood on each of the four floors. But with the use of downlights restricted, did the brief hinder or help the creative process? “I would say it helped,” says Greisen. “When you’ve got a tight brief, it forces you to come up with alternative ideas. A lot of the elements we incorporated into the design probably wouldn’t have been included if the client wasn’t dead against downlights in certain areas. We just had to find a new way of doing it.”

Getting the feel of the space right was a top priority for the design team, but so was energy efficiency, with the lights in the spa operating for a whopping 17 hours each day. To achieve the most efficient approach, 70 per cent of the fittings used are low energy LED products with some halogen downlights used to light sculptures around the space. “We used KKDC linear and flexible LEDs throughout the spa. The flexible LED was particularly suited for the curved coffer elements of the spa and also for the numerous curved slots integrated into the walls. It meant that we could use the same fitting in the coffer as in the skirting and achieve the same colour temperature throughout,” says Greisen.

The full treatment

The four floors of the spa are designed so each has a different feel, the finishes getting darker the further you go underground. The central feature is the marble staircase, which is lit from the topmost floor to the sub-basement entirely with the same lighting detail concealed on one side. “We used diffusers to conceal the light source and soften the effect. It’s really nice and I don’t think we would have incorporated something like that had our options not been limited,” says Greisen.

“We used diffusers to conceal the light source and soften the effect. It’s really nice and I don’t think we would have incorporated something like that had our options not been limited” Ellie Greisen, Lighting Design International

Moving into the treatment rooms, the concealed lighting element of the design remains but four of the rooms incorporate LED downlights to achieve the higher light levels needed for treatments. Six different scenes were designed for these spaces. “The treatment rooms can switch from dark to light, depending on the therapist’s requirements. At other times there is just a simple halo at the back of the seat, which makes the room dark but gives the therapist enough light to move safely around the room,” says Greisen.

To control the scheme, an iLight system is used throughout. The design team was able to keep the controls element to a minimum, due to the different feel on each floor. “Leading from the design, four different scenes are naturally created, so we didn’t need to alter it that much.”

In the end, they added a daytime scene and an evening scene, which Greisen says were very similar. “There really wasn’t a lot you had to change in the spa. The control system was set up and we literally just let it run,” she recalls.

Show-stopper

In the dark depths of the spa lies its show-stopper – a swimming pool constructed from stainless steel, housed in a room finished in black marble. “The Tunisian black marble has a unique gold vein running throughout, which is illuminated perfectly by the lighting. We created a concealed ceiling slot all the way around, producing a warm, white light that picks up the vein,” says Greisen.

Uplights were placed in the bottom of the pool, which light up through the water onto a white ceiling, the only light surface in the room. It is further accentuated through the movement of the water. “The water is continuously moving because there is an overspill at the edge, creating a ripple. This creates a pattern on the ceiling that is always changing,” explains Greisen.

In addition to the uplights in the water, more concentrated uplights, which are also colour-changing and individually dimmable, were placed at the edge to highlight the feature wall. “The feature wall and the steps into the pool can all be individually controlled, so there are many different combinations that can be created,” says Greisen.

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