Hotel Indigo makes a Thoroughly contemporary statement through its interiors about modern Liverpool and adds design gestures that also link it to its industrial heritage

Interior design: Denizen Contracts; Carroll Design

The luxury Hotel Indigo with its Marco Pierre White restaurant has opened in the heart of Liverpool’s commercial district. This £15m, 151-bedroom hotel is just minutes from the city’s World Heritage Site.

The design of Hotel Indigo took the local area’s heritage as its theme, reflecting the city’s cotton trade history in the decor of its guest rooms and the use of artwork depicting its location, including images of St Nicholas Church, Edmund Street, the Cotton Exchange and the Liver Birds.    

With a design concept created by Denizen Contracts in conjunction with owner Intercontinental Hotels Group, and put in place in collaboration with Manchester-based interior design practice Carroll Design, Hotel Indigo set out with the design brief to make it welcoming, colourful, vibrant and with an intriguing story that reflects the local area.

This starts immediately, with the building’s facade faced by rainbow-coloured glazing. A pavement cafe leads indoors to the Cotton Lounge, where colourful sofas and cosy armchairs are mixed with tables and chairs on a white oak floor, and on into the lobby.

Here a bespoke reception desk created out of timber and fibreglass with a shiny gel coating is located. Behind the desk is commissioned wall graphic of multicoloured strands of cotton, a theme repeated in various guises throughout the hotel.

Lighting in the public areas is in the form eggshaped Gregg Media and Gregg Grande pendant lamps, designed in Italy by Roberto & Ludovica Palomba for Foscarini.

Beyond the lobby and down an open staircase is the bar and Pierre Marco White restaurant. The bar is discreetly screened from the dining area and features a counter topped with Corian. Its bright yellow glass front continues the hotel’s yellow colour and repeats the cotton-swirl theme.

The bright yellow colour palette is carried on into the restaurant, where the challenge was to integrate the sensitivities of a signature restaurant and the Indigo’s colourful personality. MPW stamps his authority on the space with huge black and white art portrait photographs taken by Dave Bentley, one of MPW’s main photographers, featured on the walls and on window blinds.
Dining chairs are upholstered in yellow faux leather, there are banquettes in brown leather, and in addition to the Gregg pendants overhead the space features Delight, a unique wall light draped
with (fire-retardant) cloth.

All guest rooms have been individually designed, yet retain the colourful, welcoming vibe already established in the public spaces with colour themes of teal, yellow, orange or blue. Black walnut flooring is used in these spaces, topped by bespoke rugs and custom-made furniture, and each has a feature wall behind the leather headboard filled with a cotton-theme graphic.

The cotton theme even makes it into the bathroom, carried on the glazed shower screen, and there is a vertical band of colour behind the freestanding basin. Lighting is hidden, except for a pendant light that can be pulled down over the vanity unit.

It’s cotton pickin’ everywhere!