Room for Eight
Room for Eight from Z.N. Singer
Room for Eight

When told to design a hotel room, I immediately thought of what happened whenever my family stayed in a hotel on vacation - including my parents there were ten of us. We had to check out three rooms to get by - and barely at that.

Hotel rooms, I realized, are all designed for two. Yes, America is not currently the land of big families, but it is still a neglected niche market. So I set out to design a hotel room ideal for up to six, but capable of taking eight. It suited my penchant for space challenges.

For a family that big, just packing and getting in the car is a chore not lightly undertaken: any trip using a hotel is going to last a few days. So the room would need to serve as a ‘base’ for a large family for two or three days comfortably. Someplace they could return to and relax in the evening, and get going in the morning. I also wanted to see if I could separate the parents a bit, giving them a chance to also enjoy being on vacation.

To help make the sleeping arrangements work, the panels hiding the beds during the day fold out around the head of the bed, creating some sense of enclosure and privacy. For a three day stay, it will do. Note the closet doors have been turned into ladders to reach the higher beds.
Bathrooms serve another purpose when families this size stay at hotels - private changing space. Having two helps but won’t prevent jamming - a pull screen out of the shower wall allows the larger bathroom to serve two, making for a total of three such spaces - and the parents already have their own private zone.
Two dresser/closet units lend some flexibility to storage options and allow fussy children to split clothes, or girls and boys to seperate. The rack for luggage storage is essential to prevent eight people’s worth of bags cluttering up the room during the stay.
A convertible sofa allows an additional two children to sleep if they are willing to share (in a large enough family at least two almost certainly are). The table is half seated with chairs for flexibility - a bench allows more to squeeze into place on the other side.
Eating area, making use of the hallways space created giving the parents their hideaway.
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Room for Eight

When told to design a hotel room, I immediately thought of what happened whenever my family stayed in a hotel on vacation - including my parents there were ten of us. We had to check out three rooms to get by - and barely at that.

Hotel rooms, I realized, are all designed for two. Yes, America is not currently the land of big families, but it is still a neglected niche market. So I set out to design a hotel room ideal for up to six, but capable of taking eight. It suited my penchant for space challenges.

For a family that big, just packing and getting in the car is a chore not lightly undertaken: any trip using a hotel is going to last a few days. So the room would need to serve as a ‘base’ for a large family for two or three days comfortably. Someplace they could return to and relax in the evening, and get going in the morning. I also wanted to see if I could separate the parents a bit, giving them a chance to also enjoy being on vacation.

Z.N. Singer
Interior Architect Cleveland, OH