Hotels and restaurants in the United States: what the walls need

Almost 6,000 hotel projects were in the US pipeline in mid-2026, and the growth is in luxury and in conversions, the two segments that spend on original art ¹⁶⁹¹⁰². Lodging Econometrics counted 5,975 projects and 703,001 rooms at the end of Q2 2026 (down 4.9% in projects year on year), with 1,081 projects under construction and 2,147 due to start within 12 months ¹⁶⁹. Luxury reached a record 103 projects and 25,496 rooms (+21% rooms) and upper upscale a record 367 projects, while upper midscale and upscale still made up 59% of projects ¹⁰². Conversions, the rebrands and renovations that refit guest rooms and public areas, hit a record 1,567 projects and 152,044 rooms, up 15% ¹⁶⁹.

The forecast is 661 new hotels in 2026, 738 in 2027 and 832 in 2028 ¹⁶⁹. Dallas led the pipeline with 183 projects and 22,840 rooms, followed by Atlanta (157), Nashville (122), Austin (116) and Phoenix (115); Phoenix is expected to lead 2026 openings with 26 hotels ¹⁷⁰. Scottsdale alone reported about USD 300 million of new resort investment in 2026 ¹⁹⁴. On the design side, the boutique firms in Interior Design magazine's 2026 Rising Giants earned USD 190.1 million in hospitality and restaurant fees in 2025, 33% of their total and their largest sector ¹⁰¹. Adjacent pipelines use the same consultants: senior living now builds USD 90 million art-led communities such as Opus East Memphis, with an in-house gallery and statement walls in its dining areas ⁷⁵, and hotel-apartment hybrids such as the W Cleveland pair about 200 rooms with 227 apartments ²⁰⁰.

Openings from 2025 and 2026 show paintings placed by an art director, an owner-collector or an outside art consultant working beside the interior designer, rarely by the designer alone ^171173177. The Delano Miami Beach reopened in 2026 with 171 rooms after a six-year renovation by Elastic Architects and a programme of Miami artists, including oil paintings by Natalie Galindo outside Rose Bar and through the lobby ¹⁷¹. The Ivory, a 48-room boutique in Los Angeles, runs its programme under an art director ¹⁷²; at the Conrad Los Angeles, consultant Judith Tatar commissioned artists for the check-in desk, lobby and guest rooms ¹⁷³. Faena New York (120 keys) fills its lobby with a mural and hangs Cynthia Cohen paintings in the Faena Suite ¹⁷⁶; the Gansevoort Meatpacking (186 rooms, USD 40 million renovation) hangs Banksy and Hambleton originals in the lobby and Avedon and Zapata works in guest rooms ¹⁷⁵. In Texas, Rottet Studio's 200-key Crescent Hotel in Fort Worth used DAC Art Consulting for large-scale corridor works and Runyon Arts as consultant, with Madeline Peckenpaugh's oil painting in the lobby seating ¹⁰⁸; HALL Arts Hotel in Dallas, its collection handpicked by the owners with two curators, joined Marriott's Autograph Collection in January 2026 ¹⁷⁸. Las Vegas works at another scale: MGM Resorts manages nearly 1,600 artworks under a Director of Art and Culture ¹¹¹. The Dallas Edition (214 keys, 2028) and Anantara Miami (50 hotel suites, interiors by Patricia Urquiola, 2030) have not yet announced art programmes ¹⁹⁶¹⁹⁷.

Behind these projects sits a consultant tier: Kevin Barry Art Advisory (founded 1984, 20 hospitality consultants, painting collections for specific floors and one-off works for statement suites at Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt properties) ¹⁸³; Indiewalls (USD 9 million paid to artists; Marriott, Hilton, Fairmont; budgets to seven figures) ⁵³; Kalisher (100-plus artists) ⁵²; SOHO Art Consulting ⁵⁶; Curate Art Group (Marriott, Hilton, MGM, Four Seasons, offering 'value engineering') ¹⁸⁴; and Tatar Art Projects (Four Seasons, Waldorf Astoria, Rosewood) ¹⁷⁴. Curbed's 2023 account of mid-tier work describes the other end: a consultant matching the colour scheme and furniture samples with preferred artists mass-producing for a royalty, or stock-image databases ¹⁸⁷. Consultant Polly Orton describes the shift as leaving 'mass produced prints in cheap frames' behind ³¹⁹.

One large statement in the lobby, a repeatable headboard piece in the rooms, a series along the corridors and figurative or colour-led work in the bar: that is the pattern the named projects show ^108173176. Painting dimensions are rarely published for hotels, so the formats below are inferences from the nearest documented walls.

The repetition problem is specific to hotels: 60 or 200 rooms need art that reads as one collection without two rooms matching, and the mid-tier answer has been prints from a stock database ¹⁸⁷. iHomeArt paints every work to order with no prints and no stock, and variations on a composition and palette changes are possible, so a headboard piece can be ordered in as many hand-painted variants as there are rooms, with the palette shifted per floor, and stage-by-stage progress photos give the consultant a record for each piece. Subjects follow the US public-space rule: no nudity, violence or politics in lobbies, corridors or restaurants, and figurative work clothed or abstracted ⁸⁴⁸⁵.

Restaurants are the largest count of hospitality walls in the country and mostly independent, so they buy one or two pieces at a time for character rather than against a matrix ²⁰³¹²⁴. The industry contributes USD 1.4 trillion in output and employs 14.2 million people; 7 in 10 restaurants are single-unit operations and 9 in 10 employ fewer than 50 people ²⁰³. Houston designers describe restaurant work as 'immersive design' built from art installations and multisensory detail, with Gail McCleese calling it 'memory architecture' ¹²⁴.

Designer taste sets the palette: paintings rank first among the art forms designers prefer in the 1stDibs 2026 survey, whose write-up singles out figurative painting ³⁰³; abstract led the 2025 survey at 48%, with landscapes and figurative work at 33% each ²³⁸. The colour detail is on the taste page. Seattle painter Melanie Biehle's 40 × 60 in (102 × 152 cm) canvases, USD 4,300–4,800 in June 2025, are also licensed to a wallcovering firm for hospitality use ²³⁹. For an independent restaurant that wants the painting rather than the wallcovering, iHomeArt's minimum order of one piece, rolled, stretched or framed finishes and a quote within one business day match the way these owners buy.

A one-page artwork matrix, a physical sample, a pilot room, shop-drawing review and a written release gate before any piece is made ²⁹³⁰³¹. A 2026 US hospitality procurement guide expects a matrix of dimensions, finish and lead time per piece, a physical sample before any full order, a pilot of one room type, museum-grade crating, photographic condition reports at pickup and delivery, white-glove delivery with an installation sign-off and a 5–10 business day defect window; it quotes 2–6 weeks for ready-made prints, 4–10 weeks for made-to-order prints and 'weeks to months' for commissions, with an 8–12% contingency ²⁹. Orders are released against a document listing artwork ID, dimensions, quantity, finish, approved reference image, approver and change cut-off, after a room mock-up ³⁰, and the design team reviews shop drawings before any custom piece is made ³¹.

Commercial terms follow the designer trade: one US art vendor's guide puts gallery discounts at 10–20%, some up to 30%, with commissions on a 25–50% deposit and 2–6 month lead times ²⁶. Saatchi Art runs a hospitality programme with large-order discounts and custom-size commissions, discounts unpublished ²⁷; trade manufacturers Wendover Art Group and Leftbank Art, each with 30,000-plus pieces and trade-only pricing, are the incumbents for volume work ²⁶⁹²⁷¹.

Against those norms, iHomeArt's verified terms are about one week to paint plus 3–7 days transit (10–13 days door to door, inside the 2–6 week window quoted for ready-made prints), free insured shipping by DHL, FedEx or USPS, progress photos or video with stage-by-stage approval, a signed certificate of authenticity per piece, volume pricing from 10 pieces and quotes within one business day; prices are not public.

Lead with bold abstracts for lobbies, calming work for rooms, warm textured neutrals for corridors and the 250 cm-plus cuts for double-height entries ²³⁸³⁰³. Counts are live. Abstract is the style most US designers plan to use and paintings their preferred art form, so the lobby cut is the first to show a consultant ²³⁸³⁰³. Textured & Plaster in cream and taupe matches the hand-applied plaster Houston designers describe ³⁰⁵. Seascapes in blue, teal and white answer the Miami and California properties in the pipeline (Delano, Royal Palm, Grand Hyatt Miami Beach, The Georgian) ^171192199, and the sand-and-terracotta landscape cut answers Phoenix and Scottsdale, where the Kimpton Miralina and Hotel Solaya renovations were described as desert-inspired and Southwestern ¹⁹³¹⁹⁵.