Room Based on Your Mood

This New Hotel Will Assign You a Room Based on Your Mood 

The mood ring of hotels just opened in St. Louis.

By KRISTINE HANSEN 

What if, in addition to handing over your credit card at check-in, you told the front desk how you were feeling?


At the 146-room Angad Arts Hotel in St. Louis, which opens Nov.1, that’s exactly what happens. Snug in the city’s Grand Center Arts District, guests can opt for a room that, engulfed entirely in one color, aims to channel a specific mood.

This is the first hotel to play with color in such a way that allows guests to tap into their current energy, or what they’d like to achieve. Green means rejuvenation, yellow links to happiness, red evokes passion and blue coaxes tranquility.

“It’s amazing when people walk in the room. You get audible gasps,” says Steve Smith, CEO and founder of Lawrence Group, the hotel’s developer.

The concept came about by accident as rooms in a single hue were already on the drawing board. “We realized the experience of being in a room that’s all blue or all red is going to have a different effect on the guest. If we were going to saturate the rooms with color, why not promote the emotions?” says Smith, a St. Louis native and part of the reason this project landed in his his hometown and not another city.

Guests choose their room, in lieu of the front desk assigning, either at the point of booking or upon arrival. After selecting a room size — easily labeled XS, S, M, L and XL — the color is chosen. And it’s not just colored walls: furnishings throughout the room, down to rubber ducks in the bath are aligned to the hue. Each room also features an original art installation that corresponds with its assigned mood.

In addition to colorful rooms, guests are invited to ponder the senses in which we experience art. Employee uniforms, designed by local fashionista Reuben Reuel of Demestik, feature “bold prints and sharp cuts,” says the hotel. Video-art installations in the elevators, also designed by local artists, make zipping up and down floors an experience, particularly to the 12th-floor sky lobby, home to a 360-degree installation on constant loop. An exterior video-art installation suggests climbing silhouettes are scaling the building.

For food, the hotel hosts David Burke’s first St. Louis restaurant, Grand Tavern by David Burke, aimed at the pre- and post-theater crowd. One of his signature dishes, as whimsical as the hotel itself, is a mini clothesline strung with bacon, a staple at some of his other eateries. David Burke’s creations will also be available to guests staying at the property with 24-hour room service.

The Angad Rainbow Terrace is a rooftop lounge that offers sweeping views of St. Louis, including the city’s iconic Gateway Arch, while serving up craft cocktails and small plates. But the real party happens in the Angad “Playroom,” where visitors can sip on spirits while playing a classic board game or jamming out on one of the instruments available to play.