21-03-2017

Emotional design: porcelain surfaces for spas and wellness centres

Hotel wellness areas offer all the comforts required for an optimal experience of relaxation, underlining them with high-tech porcelain surfaces that add to the pleasures of the senses

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Many of today’s spaces seek to stimulate the pleasures of the senses with components such as water, steam, music, the sounds of nature and vegetation.

This is particularly true of wellness centres, originally opened near hot springs but now common in all towns and holiday resorts. Hotels have found that wellness areas and beauty centres are important attractions, and that latest generation ceramics are perfect for covering walls and floors in these facilities, as direct contact with ceramic surfaces contributes a tactile dimension to the sensory experience.

With technical properties such as non-absorbency, resistance to temperature excursions and non-slip finishes, porcelain surfaces by Eiffelgres have been used in numerous spa and wellness projects.

In the spa at the Hotel Excelsior Pesaro, on the Adriatic Coast, Eiffelgres flooring materials from the Sensible collection help create optimal sensations of "balance, harmony, and pleasure for the mind and body alike".

Sensible is a sophisticated “combination of technology and nature” expressed in three different surface finishes (Sign, Rise and Bushhammered) in 6 colours (White, Cream, Red, Green, Grey and Black).

The most innovative feature of Eiffelgres’s Sensible surfaces is their different "perceptive interpretations”, for example in the Sign surface, in which “the texture may be more or less evident, or even disappear entirely, depending on our point of view".

The six shades in the colour palette are not pure colours, but a combination of shades that permit natural integration of apparently contrasting aspects, such as "fragility and strength, moderation and excess, technology and nature".

In spaces where the surface coverings really make the difference, as in spas and fitness areas, these contrasts are made clear in combinations of water and stone, high and low temperatures, rainfall effects, steam and sunlight.

The result is true emotional design: high-tech porcelain tiles underline these contrasts, maximising the personal experience of relaxation.

Marco Privato

GALLERY