Color Design Hotel

Hotel description

It’s perhaps a bit ironic, unless you’re quite up to speed on additive color theory, that the first impression of a place called Color Design Hôtel should be predominantly white. But as a palate (or palette) cleanser, white is the obvious choice — and as a contrast to the relatively gritty Bastille, one of Paris’s up-and-coming neighborhoods, the hotel’s stark minimalism is certainly striking.

Once you’re upstairs the colors kick in. Each floor is on its own wavelength, shot through with a single color. The theme does liven the Color Design’s quarters, but what’s perhaps more interesting, once you’ve checked in, is the hotel’s smart marriage of style and efficiency. “Cheap yet chic” is hard to come by anywhere, Paris perhaps more than most, but the Color Design Hotel delivers it with aplomb.

The budget emphasis shows not in any cutting of corners, but in what’s not present. There’s no restaurant, no bar, no spa, nothing like that. It’s not for the high-maintenance. But what the Color Design does provide, it provides in style — spend the night in and you’ll be rewarded with a DVD library and an iPod docking stereo system.