Art for hotels and restaurants in Saudi Arabia, painted to order

In January 2023 the Saudi press reported that the culture and tourism ministries had added cultural criteria to the rules for tourist accommodation, under the headline that hotels must acquire works by Saudi artists; check the current requirement with your operator. The opened hotels go further than any rule. W Riyadh hangs a six-metre tapestry by Abdulnasser Gharem in its lobby and his English-and-Arabic typography in its guest rooms. Assila in Jeddah shows more than 2,000 works by Saudi artists, and at Four Seasons Riyadh local makers produced the reception panels that reinterpret the carvings of old adobe houses.

The practical split: buy the pieces guests remember, for the lobby and the suites, from Saudi artists through their galleries or at Riyadh's art events, which run from Noor Riyadh in November to Art Week Riyadh in April. Give the rooms, corridors and dining rooms canvases painted in the same palette, so the two read as one collection. If an artist licenses a design for the rooms, we can paint it by hand at room size with the rights holder's written permission.

Saudi lobbies are built big, and their centrepieces are rarely paintings. JW Marriott Riyadh's triple-volume lobby is anchored by a seven-metre-wide marble reception desk and a glass installation of a desert night; St. Regis Riyadh has a curved sculptural staircase and a crystal chandelier depicting the pages of a history book. At The Jeddah EDITION an orange kinetic sphere hangs in the lobby, beside a desert-sunset diptych in wood.

The canvas belongs on the walls around those pieces: the reception backdrop, the lounge, the lift lobby. Seen from across a tall room, a canvas that looked generous in a showroom can look small, so size it to the wall and the viewing distance, or hang two or three panels as one. More on hotel lobby art.

The opened hotels plan their rooms as a series. W Riyadh hangs one artist's typography in every guest room; Bab Samhan pairs light cream with geometric pattern and local art across its 134 rooms; Four Seasons Riyadh gave its rooms two palettes in vivid greens and turquoise.

Count by room type, not by key. The W's 210 rooms include 17 suites and three penthouses: each suite wants its own piece, while standard rooms can share a handful of designs, varied by hand so no two canvases are identical. Ask us to keep the designs exclusive to the property if no other hotel should hang them. We label every canvas by room or floor with a packing list and keep the order codes on file, so a canvas for a refurbished floor matches the first run. Corridors follow the same logic: see hotel corridor art and guest-room art programmes.

Inside hotels, every venue has its own identity and its own art. Mandarin Oriental Al Faisaliah runs nine dining venues; Bab Samhan sets the Najdi restaurant Jareed beside a Mediterranean one and an all-day room. Outside them, cafés are the fastest-growing channel in Saudi food service, and independents run most outlets. The designed ones show the range: Origin Cafe in the JAX District is a 329 m² warehouse of exposed concrete and wood; Bujairi Terrace in Diriyah gathers 27 food and drink outlets in Najdi stone, straw and mud; Saddle House in the Diplomatic Quarter has an equestrian-inspired, sculptural interior.

Hang the large canvas where the room is read from the door, away from grills and coffee steam, and dust it dry rather than spraying it. A group opening a second branch can re-order the first branch's designs from their codes, sized to the new walls. More on restaurant wall art and art for restaurants and bars.

Many of the new projects pair hotel rooms with long-stay units. Fairmont Ramla in Riyadh offers 249 serviced units, from one-bedroom suites to four-bedroom penthouses; JW Marriott Jeddah, The Apartments, is planned with 356 units on the Corniche; Raffles Jeddah pairs its 182 rooms and suites with 120 branded apartments, each with a sea-facing balcony.

These rooms are lived in, so their art sits closer to a home than a hotel room: a canvas wide enough for the sofa wall, quieter work in the bedrooms, nothing a guest tires of in a month. Plan one pack per layout, from studio to penthouse, approve it once, and we paint the run and label each canvas by unit and room. In a tower facing the sea, hang canvases on the inland walls, out of the glare from the glazing. See art for serviced apartments.

The coastal and desert resorts are built from their landscape. The Red Sea EDITION uses rammed earth, coral stone, natural oak and timber screens; St. Regis Red Sea has clay plaster walls; Desert Rock keeps to warm tones of sand, stone and earth; Six Senses Southern Dunes draws its soft furnishings from the colours and patterns of Bedouin dress.

In rooms like these a flat, brightly coloured canvas fights the walls, while relief in sand, clay and sea tones belongs with them. Textured and plaster work travels stretched or framed, never rolled, so plan the route early for island and desert sites: we find the best one for the address and confirm the cost before dispatch. Unsure how a texture will look in strong coastal light? Ask for a side-lit photograph before you approve it. See textured paintings and art for beach resorts.

Riyadh alone had a record 21,666 hotel rooms in its pipeline in mid-2026, so fit-outs overlap and dates move: Rosewood's Diriyah hotel, first announced for 2025, is now due in 2027. Art left to the last month competes with every other late package, so fix the schedule while the furniture is specified and time the painting to the date the floors are ready.

Designer, FF&E buyer, operator or owner, the route is the same. Send the art schedule or the room plans; we quote each line, usually within one business day, and paint one sample first for the mock-up room if you want one. Stage photographs go straight to whoever approves, and nothing moves on without a yes. A run of a hundred canvases usually travels by air or sea freight rather than express. More on FF&E art supply, Gulf hotels and palaces and the Saudi Arabia wall art guide.

Each canvas can travel stretched and ready to hang, framed, or rolled; a rolled canvas, the lightest and most economical way to send a large painting, arrives without stretcher bars, and any local framer can stretch it for you.