W San Francisco has unveiled a refreshed W Living Room as part of a sweeping first-floor refurbishment at its 181 3rd Street location, reworking the hotel's arrival experience, bar, dining spaces and a new fireside lounge called the Warmth Window. The overhaul refreshes public spaces across the first floor, and it arrives dressed in indigo, burnished gold and warm walnut meant to evoke the city's own history.
The redesign was handled by HBA San Francisco, according to Boutique Hotelier USA, which reports the firm's designers leaned on burnished gold, deep indigo, warm walnut and sculptural glass throughout the space. The outlet notes that the indigo running through the design is meant to reference the changing tones of San Francisco Bay along with the city's denim history, while the gold details are intended to evoke California's light, the Gold Rush, and the city's ambition and innovation.
The centerpiece of the new W Living Room is an illuminated brass geometric feature wall conceived as an abstraction of a golden geode, per the same outlet's reporting. Amber glass pendants, layered materials and custom seating designed for gathering round out a room the hotel is positioning as, in the outlet's words, a gathering place built for the digital era.
A Reworked Bar and a New Fireside Nook
The redesigned bar is one of the more dramatic pieces of the renovation, featuring dimensional indigo tile, a blue quartzite countertop, illuminated walnut-clad columns and glowing display niches, Boutique Hotelier USA reports. Elsewhere on the floor, a new space called the Warmth Window offers what the outlet describes as an intimate setting anchored by a sculptural fireplace.
The bar itself sits at 181 3rd Street, according to a menu posted by Marriott, which lists the Living Room Bar as open daily from 4 p.m. to midnight, with a late-night menu running from 11 p.m. to midnight. That schedule differs from Boutique Hotelier USA's own account, which describes the W Living Room as serving until 1 a.m. Monday through Saturday and until midnight on Sundays — a discrepancy between the two sources that isn't resolved in the available reporting.
All-Day Dining Built Into the New Layout
Beyond the bar and lounge areas, the refreshed Living Room introduces an all-day dining experience that extends into the night, per Boutique Hotelier USA's reporting. The hotel's general manager, Jeff Ossenkop, said the transformation honors the property's history while looking toward its future, according to the outlet.
That history runs deep for the brand. W San Francisco opened in 1999 as the world's first purpose-built W Hotel, per Boutique Hotelier USA, and the property is also credited with having pioneered the W Living Room concept itself. According to Trips + Giggles, the hotel has 401 guest rooms, including 12 suites.
A 7x7 Bay Area article dated October 19, 2011, described stylish improvements at the hotel.
Part of a Wider Brand-Wide Makeover
The San Francisco refresh is one piece of a much larger push across the W Hotels portfolio. Other properties that have undergone renovations include W Austin, W Dallas, W Hoboken and W Nashville, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which also reports that the brand expects 90 percent of its U.S. portfolio to be transformed by 2029.
Those renovations can look markedly different from city to city. At W Hollywood, a transformation led by Rockwell Group brought calming greens, yellows and blues, undulating velvet seating, a mirrored centerpiece and a conversation pit, The Hollywood Reporter notes, along with two new dining concepts: There There for dinner and The Patio within The Garden for all-day eating. Elsewhere, the W New York–Union Square took its Living Room in a different direction entirely, repositioning it from the entry level up into a former ballroom, according to Hospitality Design, which also traces the brand's living-room-instead-of-lobby concept back to 1998, when Barry Sternlicht transformed New York's Doral Inn into the original W Hotel New York.
