Materials of Interior Design- come learn with me

In my never-ending quest for new experiences that will help me do my job, I have enrolled in an interior design class on materials and finishes. As far as color goes, it's important to be able to translate color into a variety of other materials, like stone, fabric, metal, wood, ceramics... the list goes on.

So, last week was my first day of class.

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For our first assignment, we are designing a prototype hotel room. We took a tour of a couple nice hotels in San Francisco, the Westin, and the Four Seasons, for an up-close and personal examination of a typical room at each establishment.

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The first room we saw, at the Westin, was clean, elegant, but didn't knock my socks off. The marketing and sales rep went on and on about how they wanted their rooms to feel like home, and be cozy and inviting. It was rather amusing to hear the customer service reps wax prosaic about design elements.

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When our concierge at the second hotel started going on about how white paint is a must to make a ceiling feel higher, and that all light colors open up a space, while all dark colors close in a space, I had to bite my tongue to remain politely silent. It's really hard to keep silent when you know someone has it all wrong.

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Take this amazing room at the Gramercy Hotel in NYC. I don't see these gorgeous ceilings getting in the way. (of course, it doesn't hurt that they are nice and tall!)

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For the first step of our multi-part assignment, we have to come up with a client profile, and settle on a look based on some historical style. The hotel has to be located in San Francisco, and we have to use the same 350 foot floor plan. What would you do?!