Conservation works to the Hotel Café Royal have facilitated its new use and long-term benefit as a new five-star luxury hotel with 160 bedrooms, a subterranean spa as well as private and public function rooms. Donald Insall Associates was the Conservation Architect for the designated Areas of Significance of the Grade II listed 20th century building, working in close collaboration with the Lead Architect David Chipperfield Architects. Our role at the Hotel Café Royal was to act as a consultant for the applications for planning and listed building consent and to prepare design proposals for the works to the historic rooms and, thereafter, tender and construction-level drawings and documentation inspections of the works during the construction period.

Ten historic rooms designated as Areas of Special Interest have been repaired, refurbished and altered so as to provide hotel suites and/or function rooms, together with the entrance lobby, lift lobbies and stairs to the Café Royal from Regent Street and the new entrance to the spa via the original County Fire Office and its helical stairs. The Tudor, Celestine, Club and Empire suites are now bedrooms and the Domino, Grill and Ten Rooms are now restaurants. The works encompassed repair, refurbishment and alteration in respect of original joinery and mosaic, specialist decorations including gilding, ceiling paintings, plaster and composition, as well as providing new interventions to suit the new use as a hotel in order to meet current requirements for environmental comfort and control.