Things I’ve Learnt: Henry Reeve, IHG Hotels

As head of interior design at InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), Henry Reeve has over 20 years’ experience in the creative sector working both in-house and client side, now responsible for creating the interior design and guest experience across IHG’s hotels in Europe, with a particular focus on the company’s boutique and lifestyle portfolio.

Since joining IHG, Reeve has worked across some of the brand’s most celebrated and award-winning design projects, including the launch of the first Kimpton outside of the Americas at Kimpton De Witt in Amsterdam; more recently opening Kimpton BM Budapest. He has led the teams responsible for the design of the vast majority of the Hotel Indigo estate across Europe, including the much lauded Hotel Indigo Bath and Hotel Indigo The Hague. As well as designing new hotels in IHG’s pipeline, Reeve has worked on countless refurbishment projects across IHG’s existing hotels. Here, he shares lessons gleaned from a life in industry.

Enjoy it.

To work in a creative field is a real privilege. I have been lucky enough to work both agency and client side, collaborating with agencies and creatives from across the globe – and it’s very easy to get caught up in the day-to-day challenges of juggling budgets, meetings, clients, etc.

It is so important to take a step back and think about how great it is to craft spaces for people to experience and enjoy – especially in the case of hotels, which often play host to some of the best, most memorable moments of our lives. Sitting in spaces you helped create and watching people enjoy them, or working with an enthusiastic new team or alongside a truly passionate client, is a real joy and I try to take time throughout a project’s lifecycle to really take these moments in and enjoy them. As Ferris Bueller once said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Done is better than perfect.

As creatives, we tend to strive for perfection. However, I’ve learnt that perfection simply does not exist and the pursuit of it will often lead to frustration, conflict and disappointment. Regardless of budget, client or project, there will always be compromises and that’s ok – if anything, it’s good. It forces one to think differently, be flexible and if approached correctly, can often result in something far more interesting and nuanced than ‘perfect.’

It’s not about you.

Design for the project and not for yourself. It seems obvious and something I was taught very early on in my career, but I still often see work and receive feedback that is clearly personal to the individual.

The best work is always crafted with the end user in mind; it’s never about what you like, it’s what the guest or customer or client wants. When starting out in the industry it takes time to switch off that part of your brain that pushes for personal preference.

Take risks.

There are a lot of fairly dull spaces in the world and I really don’t feel we need more. When working with creatives, I really try to get them to create the new, the never-before-seen, the challenging and the unusual – and ultimately, hopefully, their best work. Obviously there are limits, but I would certainly rather create spaces with impact that live long in the memory than create vanilla, forgettable spaces.

All the small things.

It never ceases to amaze me how, more often than not, it’s the very small things that people remember. It’s easy to focus on the big impact of large aspects of a space and to think that’s what will define it and demand attention and create memory – and yet (for example) it’s the weird mug we put in a hotel bedroom that people always mention.