“People redo their homes every seven to 15 years,” said Brooke Wagner.
Hospitality properties do, too—skewing to the shorter end of the range. So two things make sense about her recent interior work at one of five rental cottages at the new Lido House Hotel.
First, that the Newport Beach-based interior designer mixes current and classic, which speaks to the timing issue.
Second, that Newport Beach-based R.D. Olson Development, which built and owns the hotel, picked particular designers to do the work.
“We do a lot of homes,” Wagner said. And Lido House General Manager Adam Beer said Olson Owner Bob Olson “pushed for this” residential approach to the Balboa Peninsula cottages.
“They’re part of (room) inventory,” he said. “People want to be in this area, but they want the hotel services.”
Wagner’s focus fit the property’s aim of having really nice hotel digs feel to guests like they live there.
Cottages are “comfortable for families,” Beer said, describing a scene of cottage “back doors open, sitting in Adirondack chairs, kids on the lawn.”
Wagner’s 13-year-old eponymous firm joined four other local designers, each of whom took a dab and a daub at one of the cottages (see related story, page 25).
The structures are a hybrid between a traditional hotel suite and a for-sale residence, such as condo units at a lifestyle hotel—a trend returning to hotel development—or ultra-luxe for-sale homes at properties like Montage Laguna Beach.
President Emeritus
Wagner emphasizes the “transitional, coastal-inspired design [in] different styles: If it’s not coastal, we’ll do contemporary or modern or Spanish.
“We do a lot in Newport Beach and L.A., the Bay Area, and as far as New Hampshire.”
The Lido House cottages aren’t stand-ins for a hotel’s presidential suite—Lido House has one of those.
“That’s about 1,200 square feet on one floor,” Beer said, while cottages are three levels, counting the rooftop deck, and span 1,163 square feet to 1,525 square feet.
Rooms at Lido were recently $429 and up at booking websites. The presidential suite and cottages go for $1,500 and up, he said.
Beer calls it “residential presidential.”
The units are also upgrades on extended-stay hotels: One client has booked “16 nights in July,” Beer said.
Row Houses
The cottage designers worked independently.
“I didn’t know what cottage[s] looked like until they were installed,” Wagner said, using a term from the fine-art world.
“The five work well together, like row houses, [yet] all have really different results. It’s interesting to see them come together,” she said.
We “did pretty much all the things that had aesthetic” influence—from colors to cabinetry to pillows.
Wagner noted the master bathroom in her cottage as an attempt to “be on-trend and classic” in materials and feel.
Classic elements include a hexagon floor with “super-timeless terra cotta” and a white, free-standing tub with light-gray countertop.
“Current” encompasses “brass hardware instead of brushed nickel,” painted tile—“taupe is trendy right now”—and an “on-trend wood” in the oak mirror.
Beer noted “whimsical elements—tile work, splashes of color” among all five cottages.
Wagner’s is a “classic, coastal feel,” she said. “We wanted to keep it light and organic to Newport Beach.”
A second cottage hits the Newport Beach scene from a very different angle.
“One was kind of based on the atmosphere of the [Balboa] Fun Zone: neon lights [and] a youthful vibe,” she said. “Some are more soothing and relaxing, some more funky for a younger crowd.”
So while the Fun Zone might work well for a bachelorette party, guests might want touches of “honeymoon in my cottage” portions, such as “white oak floors with a sea salt finish”—another contemporary/classic combination.
“I love neutrals, textures, soothing environments,” Wagner said, “rather than bold and punchy.”
Cottage descriptions revel in reconciling such paradoxes via design-speak juxtapositions: “cocktail party … cozy family,” “high-fashion … homey.”
Home Suites Home
That’s by design, too.
The hotel has to be what it is—a high-end hospitality offering in what’s consistently the priciest hotel submarket in Orange County, according to data from CBRE Hotels in Los Angeles. It’s there to fill rooms and put “heads in beds,” as the industry saying goes.
If the best way to fulfill that practical goal is to make potential guests, and likely also pedestrians on 32nd Street, do a double-take on the designs, so be it, and so much the better.
A Lido House slogan is “exactly like nothing else,” and Beer works it into his descriptions.
It seems to fit, he said, each cottage mixing eclectic and standard design and all featuring “first-floor dining, second-floor bedrooms, and a third-floor roof deck with barbecue and TV.”
Lido House is run by Bethesda, Md.-based Marriott International under its Autograph Collection brand, which doesn’t have rules so much as flexibility on hotels’ look.
So the interior designers took relatively free reign. Local vendors were tapped when possible, including for furniture and flooring.
Beer said that personally and professionally, the product is a success.
“Every day one becomes my favorite. Then it changes,” he said. Guests tell him, “I wanna do my house like this.”
