Design
Quiet Design: The Hotels Replacing Marble With Craft
Gilding is out. Hand-thrown ceramics, local stone and rooms you can actually sleep in are in.
5 min read · Updated September 2026
Luxury hotel design has spent a decade shouting. The most interesting openings now whisper: muted palettes, local materials, and lighting designed for evening rather than photography.
The test is simple. Can you read in bed, find the light switch at 3am, and hear nothing from the corridor?
Material honesty
Concrete, timber and unpolished stone have replaced the reflex reach for marble. Rooms feel calmer and, oddly, more expensive.
- Aman Tokyo
Stay · Tokyo, Japan
- Four Seasons Sayan
Stay · Ubud, Indonesia
- The Silo Hotel
Stay · Cape Town, South Africa
Buildings with a past
The strongest new properties are conversions — grain silos, townhouses, industrial halls — where the architecture was already worth looking at.
- Zeitz MOCAA
Do · Cape Town, South Africa
- The Greenwich Hotel
Stay · New York, United States
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