The monumental facade and inner courtyard of Sofitel Legend The Grand Amsterdam  is now lit by new, custom-designed LED lighting from Royal Philips Electronics. The outdoor lighting accentuates the characteristic features of the historic building.

The premises where a luxury hotel locates in can be traced back to the 15th century, and in the past the building had served as Amsterdam's town hall and a monastery. Following the switch-over to Philips LED lighting for the indoor lighting inside the luxury hotel several years ago, the exterior part of The Grand is now also being illuminated by LED lighting. The purpose of lighting up the inner courtyard is to highlight the aesthetic features of this impressive building. The new LED outdoor lighting offers a seamless solution.

Robert-Jan Woltering, General Manager of Sofitel Legend The Grand Amsterdam, offered his opinion about the new lighting design from Philips: “The new LED lighting can accentuate the historic aspects of this monumental building in a stronger way, and the effect is quite astonishing.”

Petra Hulst, lighting designer at Philips Lighting, added that: “The main purpose of our lighting design here is to maintain the hotel's tranquill atmonsphere in the inner courtyard, which lies in the very central area of this busy city. Our challenge is to connect the courtyard with the hotel's entrance gate. We installed warm-white color LED fixtures in the ground and arranged them in a specially designed liner order that extends from the entrance gate to facade. This creates ‘a tranquill carpet’ for visitors. The warm light that projecting from the ground onto the facade makes the historic building look radiant.”

Projected from a number of ground spotlights, the lighting fixtures illuminate the hotel's monumental entrance gate, bringing out a warm texture from all those old bricks that consituts the gateway. From another aspect, asymmetrical lined LED fixtures lightens up the building from bottom so that there is no any light source shine directly into people’s eyes. The facade is illuminated by comfortable warm-white light without causing any glare. Because the light can be directed effectively, it only illuminates the building and also is able to prevent light from spilling out into surrounding areas. The luminaires are fixed behind shutters and project upwards, highlighting the authentic vertical elements on the building’s facade. The terrace in the inner courtyard is framed precisely by the light, and the overall design shows an appropriate shadow effect.