Yorkshire-based interior design consultancy Rachel McLane has completed the fit-out of Scarborough’s Bike & Boot hotel, including 65 guestrooms, a bar, residents’ lounge, film club and restaurant.
Striving to involve the locale as much as possible, McLane brought in craftsmen and suppliers from the area for bespoke case goods, re-upholstering furniture, sourcing local photographs for guestroom doors, creating graphic blinds using original railway poster designs and producing wall mounts featuring bicycle seats and handlebars instead of the traditional taxidermy heads.
Other unique items in the hotel on Cliff Bridge Terrace include clocks made of brightly coloured bicycle bells and flip flops, bespoke lighting created from old bicycle wheels and crates, and a custom-made handle for the residents’ lounge, based on the ampersand between the words Bike and Boot.
“We were fortunate with Bike & Boot as the building was once a row of Georgian terrace houses and retains much of the original architecture. Even now, the envelope of the building remains true to its heritage,” says McLane, who heads up a team of specialist designers with experience in concept design, design detailing and space planning for the hotel, residential, retail and leisure industries.
“It made no commercial sense to strip back and replaster the walls. Rather than hiding the faded grandeur of the original building, we have worked with it and given it a new lease of life. My attitude is not to be overly precious; interior design is not about me forcing my ideas onto a client and their customers.
Instead, it is about creating something that works for them and enhances their business. It is about producing the best solution we can, for the budget – and that does not mean holding back on quality or design. Good design does not have to cost the earth.”
A Georgian-inspired colour palette was used to paint over the old anaglypta wallpaper in the guestrooms, while the team also designed and commissioned wallpaper based on activity maps of the area and recreated posters of original postcards of Scarborough from its heyday as a sought-after spa resort.
The design and installation of the hotel’s new bar reflects McLane’s green values, breathing new life into a metal back-bar from an old venue in Leeds while at once commissioning a Harrogate-based company to produce the joinery elements that kit together its design.
“If you have been walking or cycling all day, you want to be able to relax and feel at home,” McLane continues. “The team sourced the bar furniture with that in mind – some of it was new and some of it was pre-loved and repurposed. An old chair can be upholstered by a skilled tradesman, and by choosing fabric of the right quality and design, the result looks great and provides the luxury of comfort.
“Renew, repurpose and replenish is an ethos at the heart of our work. I believe in avoiding sending things to landfill or bonfires whenever possible, and I am glad to say we have done our little bit with some of the bar and restaurant furniture at Bike & Boot. This has also helped to reduce our carbon footprint in shipping in new products,” adds McLane, who worked on the concept for two years with its directors Simon Kershaw and Simon Rhatigan, and for the last nine months with Infiniti Roofing & Construction.
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24 July 2020
