# How to design a luxury hotel brand identity

By Sindhur Dutta, Creative Director, BUNQ LABS. Published 5 October 2026.
Canonical: https://bunqlabs.com/insights/how-to-design-a-luxury-hotel-brand-identity

> How we built a luxury hotel brand from a jasmine braid, one repeating unit and a few strict rules, so the logo appears on almost nothing inside the hotel.

## Key takeaways

- A luxury hotel brand should get quieter the deeper a guest goes into the property.
- Things that leave the hotel carry the logo; things that stay inside carry only the pattern.
- Draw one repeating unit instead of one logo, and the whole graphic language follows from it.
- A sub-brand can be made by changing a single variable, such as colour, while everything else stays locked.
- A brand built on rules can be handed to suppliers and still come out right; a brand built on judgement drifts.

A luxury hotel brand identity is built from something true about the place, drawn as a system rather than a single logo, and applied with restraint. The brand should get quieter the deeper a guest goes into the hotel. That is how we built [The Cunningham](/projects/tch), a hotel on Cunningham Road in central Bangalore, relaunched under its own name and positioned at the top of the market.

The owners had taken operations in house after many years under outside management. We built the brand from the ground up. That meant identity, typography, colour, voice, a collateral system across the property, sub-brands, and the design and development of the website. It took seven months from brand to live website.

## What does a luxury hotel brand need to achieve?

It needs to match the standard of everything else the guest touches. The brief for The Cunningham was clear. The hotel was to sit at the highest tier of the Bangalore market, and read as a five to seven star property.

The investment behind it was real. The building work, the 130 rooms, the food programme and the in-room amenities were all specified at that level, down to the toiletry kit.

Our job was to make sure the brand lived at the same standard. A premium property let down by ordinary collateral is a familiar failure. The brief said plainly that it would not happen here.

## How do you name a hotel and use its heritage?

Start with what is already there. The Cunningham takes its name from its road. The road takes its name from Francis Cunningham, an officer of the Madras Army.

He arrived in Bangalore in 1850 as secretary to Mark Cubbon on the Mysore Commission. He spent the rest of his career here, working on the surveying and mapping that shaped the early city. He stayed on after retiring in 1861.

He came for one assignment and never left. The hotel is built for travellers who arrive for a few days and want the city to be good to them. That origin was worth holding on to.

## Should a hotel brand draw on colonial heritage or local culture?

We chose living local culture. A name can carry history. The visual identity, we felt, should come from what has lasted through everything the city has become.

That meant neither religious iconography nor the technology industry. It meant Bangalore's gardens, its flower markets and its daily rituals. Lalbagh is a short drive from the hotel. Flower markets are everywhere in central Bangalore, dense with fresh stock. They are ordinary to a resident and remarkable to anyone else.

### Taking the mark from the jasmine braid

The mark is drawn from the jasmine braid that South Indian women wear in their hair. Buds are threaded into alternating patterns and worn around the bun.

It is an everyday thing. It is also an intricate craft with its own rules. That is exactly what the hotel aims to be.

The mark abstracts rather than illustrates. It is a three quarter arc of braid, with the wordmark beneath. The two ends come close but never meet. A closed circle would have been a monogram. The gap keeps it a braid.

Getting there took 200 to 300 logo iterations. The single jasmine bud alone went through 10 to 20 variations, tested large and small, in lines and in arcs.

## How do you turn a logo into a complete graphic language?

Draw one unit, not one logo. At The Cunningham, two buds facing in opposite directions form one unit. Units repeat against each other with no visible joins.

Repeat the unit along a straight line and you get a linear array, a continuous horizontal band. Give it an angular offset and the same unit curves into a radial array, an arc or a full circle. The logo itself is one specific radial array of that unit.

One module and two transformations give you an entire graphic language. The pattern on a bottle, a slipper and a candle holder is not three designs. It is one system expressed three ways. You can see the band and the arc across the collateral in [the full case study](/projects/tch).

## Where should a luxury hotel put its logo?

Only on things that leave the hotel. We set one rule for every item in the system, based on where the item goes.

Business cards, tote bags and notepads leave the property. They do identification work out in the world, so they carry the logo.

Slippers, bottles, candles and linen stay inside. A guest inside already knows where they are. A logo there would be redundant at best and intrusive at worst. So these items carry only the pattern, the faintest trace of the identity.

### Why the brand should get quieter inside

The result is a brand that grows quieter the deeper a guest goes into the hotel. This is the opposite of standard hospitality practice.

Every instinct in hotel branding pushes towards more presence: the logo on the slipper, the bottle, the napkin. Taking it off almost everything inside was the single decision that made the identity feel expensive. It cost nothing to make. A guest meets the brand all the time and is never once addressed by it.

## How should a hotel pattern be placed on objects?

Always present, and always off centre. This is the most useful rule in the system.

In practice it pushes the band to an edge, a base or a margin. That is where a well-made object carries its maker's trace. A centred mark reads as a label. Pushed to an edge, the same pattern reads as part of how the object was made.

Here is how it works on real items:

- A clear glass bottle runs the band just above its base.
- A key card carries it along one edge, and so does a business card.
- Slippers carry it across the upper.

The radial array is the one exception. Where it is used, it is centred, wrapping a candle holder as ornament rather than marking.

## How do you create sub-brands for hotel restaurants?

Change one variable and lock everything else. The Cunningham has several restaurants and zones, each with its own character. A lively rooftop restaurant cannot share the main hotel's tone without one of them feeling wrong.

So we did not build separate identities. Sub-brands change colour and nothing else. The rooftop shifts its base towards red, warmer and more energetic than the royal green.

The typeface, the mark, the pattern system and the proportions stay the same. The zone reads as its own place but remains part of the same house. The cost scales to as many zones as the property adds. And a hotel with several restaurants does not turn into several hotels.

## How do you choose colours and type for a luxury hotel?

Choose them against the building. The palette is Cunningham Green, a deep royal green, and Cunningham Cream. Gold stands in for the cream where extra richness is wanted.

The green was chosen to contrast cleanly with the cream. It also complements the dark red brick of the facade. The brand sits with the architecture rather than fighting it, so the two agree in daylight.

The typeface is Austin Roman, used everywhere without substitution. The voice is formal and soft at once. It talks about culture and place, not amenities.

## What makes a good luxury hotel website?

Room for the photography. Most hotel websites in Bangalore are not well made, so the bar was low and the opportunity was clear.

The Cunningham site is built on generous negative space. Photographs run full bleed. Headings are clear and confident without being oversized, so the type supports the images rather than competing with them.

Scrolling is handled with Lenis, which gives the site a weighted, controlled feel that suits the positioning. Navigation is an overlay panel that enters from the left. The interface stays clear until it is needed.

## Principles you can apply to your own hotel brand

These are the rules we would carry to any property:

1. **Start with what is true about the place.** Look at the name, the street and the culture that people still live in.
2. **Draw a unit, not a logo.** Build one module that can repeat and transform, and let the pattern and the mark come from it.
3. **Decide by destination.** Put the logo on what leaves the hotel and only the pattern on what stays.
4. **Keep the pattern present and off centre.** Place it at an edge or a base, where a maker's trace belongs.
5. **Make sub-brands with one variable.** Change colour, and lock the type, mark, pattern and proportions.
6. **Pick colours against the building.** Test the palette against the facade, not a moodboard.
7. **Let the photographs lead online.** Use negative space and full-bleed images, and keep the type in support.

## Why does a rule-based brand system work better for hotels?

Because the hotel will keep making objects for years, mostly without its designers. A brand that depends on judgement drifts within a season.

The Cunningham's brand comes down to one repeating unit and one rule about placement. Across every piece of collateral, the same logic holds on every surface, scale and material. That means it can be handed to a print supplier, a uniform manufacturer or an in-house team, and it will still come out right.

The outcome is a complete identity in which the logo appears on almost nothing. It is the difference between a hotel that tells you it is expensive and one that simply is. Read more about how we approach [brand identity and digital work](/services).

If you are planning a hotel launch or relaunch and want to talk through your own property, we would be glad to hear from you. [Get in touch](/contact).

## Frequently asked questions

### Should a luxury hotel put its logo on in-room amenities?

In our view, no. Inside the property a guest already knows where they are, so at The Cunningham slippers, bottles, candles and linen carry only the pattern, while items that leave the hotel carry the logo.

### Where should a hotel brand identity come from?

From something specific and true about the place. For The Cunningham we used the hotel's road and the living local culture of Bangalore, its gardens and flower markets, rather than colonial heritage.

### How do you create sub-brands for hotel restaurants without a new identity for each?

Change one variable and lock the rest. At The Cunningham, sub-brands change colour only, so the rooftop restaurant shifts towards red while the typeface, mark, pattern and proportions stay the same.

### How do you keep a hotel brand consistent when suppliers produce the collateral?

Build the brand from rules rather than judgement. One repeating unit and one placement rule can be given to a print supplier, a uniform maker or an in-house team, and the result will still be right.

### How should a luxury hotel choose its brand colours?

Choose them against the building, not against a moodboard. Cunningham Green was picked to contrast with Cunningham Cream and to complement the dark red brick of the facade.

## The work behind this article

- [The Cunningham](https://bunqlabs.com/projects/tch)

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BUNQ LABS: https://bunqlabs.com/ · Contact: projects@bunqlabs.com