Premier Hospitality

Swan Hotel

Swan Hotel
Written by Roma Publications

The Swan Hotel

Work to transform The Swan Hotel in Southwold, Suffolk, is nearing completion after a major investment to create a beautifully styled hotel that will be a gateway to the best of award-winning UK brewer and distiller Adnams.

Set to re-open in mid-October, The Swan will be one of the best British hotels to launch this year. With an emphasis on quality, from the bedrooms through to the new restaurant, The Swan’s new look has been created by architect and interior design studio, Project Orange, and combines modern luxury with the history of Southwold, Adnams and the hotel building.

Christopher Ash, Director at Project Orange, spoke to Premier Hospitality about the work:

“My co-director and I know Suffolk very well. We were approached by Adnams who told us it was going to be transforming the Swan Hotel and they were looking for design companies to work on that with them. They came to us having researched other work we’d done.

“Originally there was a separate interior design brief from an architectural brief to masterplan the site. The hotel sits in front of the Southwold campus, which is the main brewery site. They basically wanted to place the reinvented Swan Hotel at the heart of Adnams as the jewel in the crown. They also wanted to link it with the visitor experience and centre.”

For the interior design, Christopher and his team wanted something that married brewing heritage, the heritage of the site and the idea of Southwold as a premium English seaside location. The new design was also targeted at helping The Swan appeal to a broader demographic. Christopher expanded on this, saying:

“There are a number of themes with the design but basically we’ve tried to respond to the Suffolk location. We’ve used lots of crafted solutions and designed a mix of some contemporary elements with some retained antique pieces of furniture. The bedrooms, for example, have wonderful four poster beds with bright pink paint work on the tips of the posts. We also designed some very beautiful rugs inspired by wine bottles with bright colours.

“Everything else in the room is very restrained so we have beautiful pale grey flooring, natural linen curtains and then we get these pops of colour and accents of copper. We used copper as a theme to reflect the distillery and the equipment.”

A new street entrance for the restaurant through the historic bar window has opened the lounge area and restaurant and is now more fluid and accessible. The food on offer will champion the best of Suffolk alongside the full range of Adnams products. Reflecting on the project, Christopher concluded:

“It’s been a real joy for us to work on this project and Adnams has been a delightful client. My co-director and myself spent a lot of time in Suffolk and know the county well. It was a dream project to work on and we’ve had the resources to reinvent a space.”

For more information, please visit theswansouthwold.co.uk or for more information about Adnams, please visit adnams.co.uk.

Swan Hotel

Floor story

Specialising in the design and manufacture of rugs, Floor Story produce the highest quality products for a broad range of commercial-sector customers. The firm now has four years of experience in the field working on anything from hotels, through to luxury student accommodation.

While boasting a stunning range of in-house rugs, they also collaborate and produce collections for a vast host of designers including ‘Zandra Rhodes’ and ‘A Rum Fellow’.

Most recently, Floor Story have crafted the designs for Project Orange, delivering pin-point accurate products to match the specification.

Simon Goff, founder of Floor Story said:

“We visited the Swan Hotel long before we were asked to make the rugs for this project, so it was a real pleasure to be asked to get involved. We love working with Project Orange, their designs are outstanding and it was great seeing the rugs in-situ.

“We guide them towards the best colours, fibres and yarns. These designs were crucially important to the customer and I certainly feel like we delivered here.”

Simon added:

“As a company, we pride ourselves in crafting good quality products to meet the brief, with a set time scale.”

About the author

Roma Publications