The 1 Hotel Mayfair opened in July 2023, just opposite Green Park. With its bronze doors and a facade draped in a living wall of foliage, it’s immediately eye-catching among the flurry of Piccadilly. Walk into the lobby and you’ll be greeted by a check-in counter hewn from a single oak tree, felled in a storm, and a four-metre chandelier woven from living moss. This is sustainable luxury in the heart of London: a pre-existing structure upcycled from a seven-storey, nondescript four-star to a nine-storey, five-star hotel; it’s part of the portfolio of properties in the 1 Hotel group, a pioneer of environmentally responsible hospitality dedicated to reducing its carbon footprint while maintaining high standards of design, service and experience. Since opening, the hotel has won awards for Best Lighting Scheme at the Brit Awards, and Best Bar and Best Restaurant in the AHEAD awards.
Visual Energy was responsible for the lighting design of the entire hotel – from bedrooms and front of house to the restaurant, bar, café, spa and facade. Throughout its five years on the project, the team worked to the mantra of ‘This is Mayfair’, riffing on the neighbourhood’s old-school reputation and the high-end craftsmanship found on Savile Row and Jermyn Street. But the project also posed some interesting challenges. How to create a luxurious ambience while constrained by the limitations of the original building and by the limitations of low energy consumption?
The answer was to get creative. Working with the original 1980s infrastructure meant dealing with low bedroom and bathroom ceilings that couldn’t be raised. Realising there was nothing available that provided the correct amount of warm, ultra-low glare and energy efficiency, we collaborated on a design for bespoke downlights that measured just 50mm, small enough to fit in the tiny ceiling void. To avoid energy waste, we ensured most lights served multiple purposes. For example, a single light illuminates the entrance, feature living wall and water fountain next to each of the 108 bedrooms. And to illuminate the plant box in every bedroom, we devised a simple but effective solution that kept electrical output to a minimum: place a box within the box with an LED strip wrapped around it, which bounces light up and down, creating the distinctive shadow effect around the plant and lighting the amenities.
For the display shelves that separate the bar from the main lobby, we drew on our experience at the V&A and treated them like museum vitrines, creating points of interest with tiny fibre optics concealed in the uprights and shelves. For Tom Sellers’ all-day restaurant, Dovetale, we had to take into account the natural light coming in through the skylights, an open kitchen, and the need for shifting moods throughout the day and night. The result is a galaxy of downlights set into the beautiful wooden ceiling, without being obviously visible to the guests below.
The overall result has been to create a lighting system that complements the hotel’s elegant, biophiliac design and its use of natural materials, creating a warm, comfortable feeling of relaxed, accessible glamour. On the sustainable front, 1 Hotel Mayfair uses 50% less energy than a standard five-star UK hotel – each of the 108 bedrooms is lit with less than 4.9w per square metre – using fittings that are up to 80% recyclable. Visual Energy has worked on existing buildings before, but raising a four-star hotel to a five-star standard presented its greatest challenge yet. And the hotel group’s eco-awareness has had a game-changing effect. As well as raising the bar for sustainable hospitality in the UK, it’s also had a lasting effect on the Visual Energy ethos – we are now committed to sustainable practices in all our projects.
