Bar Decor

I need to start off by stating that I am not a bar decor expert, an interior designer, an architect, or a decoration show host. I am just someone who happens to have really good taste! Okay, you be the judge of that. Here I've grabbed some pictures and videos of bars or pubs and commented about their decor. I did not do this to bash anyone or anyone's restaurant or bar. I'm just posting this because I enjoy walking into new bars and checking out their design and atmosphere. I admire tiny bars that are really classy and comfortable despite their size, yet cringe at humongous airplane hangar-sized bars that feel like a cafeteria.

The Mount Airy bar is located inside of the Mount Airy Casino Resort in the Poconos in Pennsylvania. Their aim is to achieve a 4 star rating.

I think that the bar is beautiful. I love the crystal-like design of the bar and the bar is the perfect size, plenty of room for the bartenders to maneuver and it looks like comfortable seating arrangements as far as spacing goes, though for comforts sake I might go with stools with a backing. The lighting animation in the video is too loud. Perhaps that was just for the video. The gentle red flame in the photo is perfect though. A slowly moving flame or a cool blue ice would be great too. I don't really care for the hanging crystals off of the ceiling. They seem out of place to me. I might go with just a simple inset ceiling light with purple or blue trim. Overall I really like this bar though. It's a great focal point of the room and it's just nice styling.

This bar was or is for sale in Costa Blanca, Spain. Below are three restaurants and connected directly outside of the window is a swimming pool. This bar seats 100 and holds 400.

If I owned a bar, this would be almost exactly what I would shoot for decor-wise. This bar is very elegant. The colors are perfect. I love when a bar sets one color theme yet still provides great lighting contrast, in this case the orange color scheme with the blue coming in through the swimming pool portals. The furniture looks comfortable and the bright green of the pool table jumps out without being too flashy or annoying. The mosaic floor pattern designs and the railings are great and I love the rock wall against the swimming pool. I'm hard-pressed to find any flaws. The only things I might do differently are take the television off the floor or lose it altogether, and change the running lights under the outside of the bar. I would try to use lighting that looked a little less like Christmas light strings, maybe some kind of very small and dim recessed lights. I'm nitpicking though. In my mind, this bar decor is near perfect.

This is O'Neals Sports Bar in Philadelphia, Pa. This is a very quick video but I wanted to use it because I wanted to mention that the exterior of a bar as well as the interior is important.

The exterior of O'Neals is very classy yet still down to earth. Notice the neon bar signs in the windows inset and immersed in the green, white, and red striped wall. All above the beautiful wooden facade. This is the ultimate universal bar. There's nothing saying you have to be either a super high class establishment, or a dive bar. I don't know for a fact, but my guess is that bars like this make the most money. I don't know anybody who would be uncomfortable walking into this bar.

The interior of the bar looks great as well. This is a very personal bar as the room is more narrow and people will be closer together. I love the trophies (or plates?) mounted next to the dart board. Great taste. There's nothing saying you need to completely fill up a sports bar's wall with posters, signs, and memorabilia; however, on the right side of the bar I might add some neon sports bar signs between the television sets to fill out the space better. Nothing too bright because you want people to enjoy the game without being distracted. A four leaf clover would be perfect or a custom O'Neals sign with their best lager in neon. I couldn't make out much of the patio but I love the hanging crested O'Neals Irish Pub & Restaurant. I've never been to this bar, but if I was in Philly I'd walk in without a second thought for its decor alone.

This excellent looking bar is in the Sheraton Yankee Clipper Hotel in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. This bar I've actually been to when I was a little kid. This is another swimming pool bar and we sat right up against the aquariums on the left side of the photo and watched both the fish in the aquariums and the swimmers underwater (some people have no idea there is a bar underneath where people are watching them swim, I'll leave it at that). This has nothing to do with bar decor, but I have to add that my dad jokingly offered my older brother $50 to moon everybody in the bar from the swimming pool. I didn't actually see it but I remember sitting in the hotel room seeing my brother run in laughing and my dad eventually following. He said he pressed his ham up against the glass for a good 3 or 4 seconds and he gave my brother a $50 bill. Thank God the bar was nearly empty (my dad was very embarrassed and never made a dare bet with my brother again). I'm sure the bartenders get that all the time though. Sorry, back to bar decor.

Just like the previous swimming pool bar, I love it. The aquariums give the room incredible color and it looks beautiful from the lobby that this room faces. I remember the room having less tables in the center, but I was younger so I could be wrong. I love the ship galley theme. Notice on the tabletops and the mast the ship rope riggings. The overhanging lanterns give a nice authentic look as well. The ceiling appears to be what the underdecks of a ship might look like and the wood bars, chairs, and tables are appropriate. In a closed room I would suggest a wooden floor as well, but as this room opens up to the hotel lobby, the matching carpet is a great way to tie the bar into the rest of the hotel.

I just wanted to add one final note about bar decor. Of all the imperfect bars, uncomfortable bars, distracting bars, or flat out dive bars I've seen, I would guess that almost all of them had bad lighting. Bars that are too dark are just creepy and bars that are too bright seem to resemble a UFO landing or a grocery store. Lighting, and color in general, just has a tendency to set an overall mood to an establishment and people must pick up on this immediately. Again, I'm no expert, but just looking at this video above it makes sense to me.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my observations. Feel free to blog about this post or share it with others and tell them how completely right or how incredibly wrong I am and how I should stick to anything other than interior bar decor. Also please vote in this quick poll before you leave. I'd like to get your thoughts on which bar above you would most like to visit.