Creativity and distinction in the hotel business is essential to success. Hotel designers around the world have discovered the growing need for individuality in hotel spaces. Every day, hotel owners are ...
Whether cool and funky or rich and romantic, Kaye Gosline’s design team promises: “This is not your mother’s Milliken.”
By Mary Scoviak
After a 26-hour coach flight from Australia to her office in LaGrange, Ga., Kaye Gosline wasn't thinking about the number of time zones she'd just crossed or whether her luggage had gone walkabout. The creative director of Milliken's hospitality carpet division was mulling over how to translate the curves of architect Jørn Utzon's Sydney Opera House, the colors of a sunset over the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the essence of a hot new bar called She - with its suspended DJ cage and bubbling 9-foot pilsner glasses at the entry to the men's room - into carpet patterns that would stop designers in their minimalist tracks.
"Travel inspires me. It gets me out of my comfort zone and forces me to look at things in a different way. Art, architecture, history, fashion, food, nature - all of that influences me," says Gosline, who has shaken up Milliken's hospitality pattern and color book since joining the flooring giant in 2006.
Gosline has a knack for spotting trends before they're on the mainstream's radar. Her on-target read on what designers want helped to reposition Milliken from a bastion of traditional elegance to a diversified style maker. Well before the release of "Factory Girl," she found a cool groove with the 1960s-inspired Funky Graphic line.
"Generally, we're seeing simpler patterns. With all of the hustle and bustle of modern life, travelers find simpler looks refreshing," she says. That's reflected not only in the pattern choices, but also in the elimination of fussy borders and, in some trendy hotels, even door drops.
Polka dots, oversized flowers and geometrics have strong appeal, but, as Gosline points out, this is an age of rugged individualism in hotel design. Milliken's recently launched Orsay collection recalls the watercolor world of Impressionist masters to address nascent demand for softer spaces with more than a bit of romance. For guest rooms, the vogue favors a textured look rather than obvious pattern - damasks, scrolls, even subtle plaids or hounds-tooths.
"Every designer wants a custom look, but few have time to start every carpet design from scratch. The Étage collection enables designers to layer patterns, mixing a center from one collection and a fill from another," she says. "There's so much competition in the marketplace. No one wants to be cookie-cutter."
Gosline forecasts a more colorful world of carpet. Gray, from charcoal to chroma, is the color du jour. "Designers are creating some interesting, even jarring, color combinations for public spaces and ballrooms. They're using gray, but mixed with green or a neutral to balance red and a brilliant blue," she says. In subtler applications, designers work with gray to cool down warm, creamy yellows. A darker shade is the perfect tone to add warmth to serene greens.
She predicts that technology, like that behind the launch of Milliken's Pure Color Box, will open up even more focus on color. Based on the Natural Color System (NCS), the Pure Color Box lets designers play with the entire color wheel. They can find the purple of suede shoes they once saw or echo the brick-red swirl on a restaurant's china. "Since day one, I've said color is what turns on designers. A great pattern in a lousy color won't sell. But, a mediocre pattern in a great color will get attention every time," says Gosline.