Interior Design Field Trip: African Pride Hotel, Cape Town, South Africa

Irwin Weiner ASID - This April I visited my hometown, Cape Town, South Africa. One impressive change since my last visit was the new African Pride 15 on Orange Hotel in the downtown area. Part of a major revitalization around government, museum, and other civic buildings, the hotel is a showcase for what I refer to as "international hotel style."

Contemporary, sleek, boldly designed, and brightly colored - this is the new hotel style sweeping the globe, and it's had a major impact on home design. Go to a mass-market consumer goods website like Overstock.com, for instance, and you'll find objects that could fit easily into hotel rooms and modern-look home decor. And regular readers will know my advice on hotel style: if you decorate in hotel style, remember that hotel rooms have no personality; they're like theatrical stage settings; you must add your personality into your home decor - whether that be family photographs, your collections, travel mementos, or family heirlooms on display in a more interesting eclectic mix.

But I won't steal any thunder from the African Pride. It's a first-rate hotel; absolutely lovely. Enjoy this slideshow of hotel scenes, and also click on this link to see my South African Details scrapbook, design impressions and other "slices of life" from my recent family vacation to South Africa - in it, you'll see an Indian Ocean resort, a tour of an almost-complete luxury home, and neighborhoods and streets in Cape Town.

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