The W Seattle Debuts Outdoor-inspired Renovations
Hotel's guest rooms redesigned to reflect Pacific Northwest style
By Eva Seelye August 8, 2016
This article originally appeared in the September 2016 issue of Seattle magazine.
Hotel guests will feel like they’re checking into the great outdoors with the debut of the W Seattle’s Pacific Northwest–inspired guestroom renovations. Each of the 415 guest rooms and nine suites of the downtown hotel have been redesigned to reflect Seattle’s history of aeronautical innovation and outdoor recreation. Illustrating these influences are design details such as each room’s “lodge wall,” printed with a 3-D log-cabin pattern, throw blankets printed with a pattern of airplane parts from Boeing 747’s model kit, and cockpit-inspired desk lighting.
“We could see that Seattleites are naturally connected to their region with a close relationship between urban and rural,” says Kajsa Krause, principal of Krause+Sawyer, the design firm spearheading the project.
Drawing on Seattle’s musical history, the renovation also includes the installation of the W Sound Suite: a private music studio and writer’s room, where professional musicians as well as hotel guests can stay and record while on the road (price upon request). Complete with a control room, mixers and microphones, The Sound Suite is also soundproof, so all hotel guests are still promised peace and quiet.
W Seattle Hotel, downtown, 1112 Fourth Ave.; 206.264.6000; wseattle.com
Follow Us
A New Place to Ice Skate by the Water
Hyatt Regency Lake Washington’s dockside rink offers lake views and eco-friendly synthetic ice.
Skating season has officially arrived. There’s a particular joy in gliding—or trying to—on cold days. I always go for the outdoor rinks, especially the ones strung with twinkling lights. It can be so romantic. And this year, there’s a new place to lace up. A 71-foot by 38-foot covered Glice rink is up and running…
Bergen: Finding a Home, Abroad
A trip across western Norway reveals strikingly Northwest sensibilities.
A few months ago, we randomly walked into Wallingford’s Fat Cat Records. Greeting us, face-out by the cash register, was not Nirvana, not Soundgarden, but Peer Gynt Suite, by the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. Was this a Norse omen, a mischievous prank from Loki? For us, two Seattleites with a trip to Norway on the…
Hives Among the Headstones
Inside a north Seattle project reimagining cemeteries as sanctuaries for pollinators.
In many old stories, bees are more than just insects. They’re messengers—tiny intermediaries between the living and the dead. There was once even a custom in Europe and America known as “telling the bees:” When a family member died, or another significant life event occurred, someone would go to the hive to share the news….
Dispatches from Greenland, Part Two: Nuuk
An insider’s guide to Greenland’s mysterious, overlooked, and charming capital.
Greenland is too vast to take in all at once. Yet a few days in Nuuk—the island’s compact, curious capital, just a four-hour flight from Newark—offer a surprisingly complete portrait. Nuuk changes like the weather that shapes it: by turns wild and polished; intimate and bold. To Northerners, it feels as hectic as Manhattan; to…