~1M

Guests per year through the Atlanta Centurion Lounge.

3,300

Guests per day — among the highest-traffic premium airport lounges in the US

4+

Scope areas — design consultation, material specification & reupholstery, teak restoration, and wallpaper.

THE BRIEF

​The American Express Centurion Lounge at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson serves nearly one million guests per year. At that volume, the lounge furniture had reached a critical point — fabric worn through to the foam, seams separating, the environment no longer meeting the standard the AMEX brand demands. Devita Jacobs Design Studio was brought in independently to restore that standard.

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THE APPROACH

Every material specification had to resolve the same core tension: find fabrics that perform under extreme daily traffic while maintaining the premium American Express aesthetic and precise brand palette. The selection process centered on Kvadrat Hallingdal 65 — a commercial textile engineered specifically for high-traffic hospitality environments — chosen because it could hold up under thousands of daily interactions without sacrificing the elevated, tactile quality a Centurion-tier guest expects.  The selection process drew directly on a background in film set decoration — where material decisions are always evaluated in the actual lighting of the environment, and every piece has to serve the atmosphere of the whole.

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How a film background shapes material decisions

Film and television set decoration is, at its core, the practice of making spaces perform. Every environment built for camera has to read correctly under light, hold up through hours of continuous use, and create a specific emotional response in the person experiencing it — often without that person consciously registering why.

That training changes how you evaluate a space. Walking into the Centurion Lounge means reading it the way a director reads a location: How does the environment communicate? How do the fabrics read under the lounge's ambient lighting? How do the textures of the upholstery relate to the harder materials around them — the floors, the walls, the bar surfaces? Does the guest moving from the entry through the seating areas to the dining zone feel a coherent environment, or a collection of furniture?

The procurement instincts developed over years of set decoration — sourcing specific, sometimes hard-to-find materials on compressed timelines — also proved directly applicable. Finding materials that met both the technical performance requirements and the aesthetic standard of an AMEX environment, then coordinating delivery and installation within the project schedule, required the same resourcefulness that goes into dressing a film set when the director wants something that doesn't exist in the catalog.

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"A lounge like this is a stage. Every guest who walks in is the talent, and the environment has to perform for them — not just look good in a photograph, but hold up under the demands of equipment, spills and foot traffic, seven days a week."

THE RESULT

Full bar stool row restored — Centurion Lounge, Atlanta.

ONGOING SCOPE — 2026

— Wallpaper repair and restoration

— Teak patio furniture restoration

— Leather booth restoration

— New accent specification (in progress)

The reupholstered bar stools present a premium branded lounge that can stand up to continuous daily use. The client was pleased with the outcome — and expanded the engagement.

Environment

The refreshed lounge reads noticeably more premium — restored to the standard the AMEX brand requires and guests expect at the Centurion tier.

Durability

Materials specified have held up under the lounge's extreme daily traffic — performing as designed in one of the most demanding hospitality environments in the country.

Longevity

The refresh extended the functional life of existing lounge furniture significantly — delivering high impact without the cost and disruption of full furniture replacement.

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