Luxury Bed Company Hästens Ventures Into Hospitality with a Dreamy Sleep Spa

From Hästens’s perspective, the hotel is an opportunity for potential customers to try out a bed if they are considering a big-ticket purchase (their products are notably high-priced.) And while selecting which mattress type to use throughout the sleep spa proved challenging (they settled on a soft model, that feels like “sleeping on a cloud,” as Hästens’s Julia Alqvist puts it), it’s clear too that potential for additional consumer crossover exists. “Our customers would sometimes say we don’t want to travel because we miss our bed,” Alqvist says to AD PRO.

As for the rooms themselves, they’re made up of a relatively neutral blue and white scheme, which dovetails perfectly with Hästens’s signature check print. (It also seems like a natural fit with the traditional Azulejo tiles of Portugal, although both parties insist that this was a coincidence.) The bathrooms, however, are  another stylistic story entirely.

Outfitted with Portuguese marble (a regional specialty), the book-geared decorative scheme is sure to make any bibliophile’s heart sing. Virtues of reading before bedtime aside, the design choice is a nod to the nearby University of Coimbra, which boasts one of the world’s oldest—and most beautiful—libraries. For guests staying at the sleep spa, special research appointments at the institution are an extra perk. Those experiences, which can be scheduled by the hotel, provide opportunities during which guests can delve more deeply into their own idiosyncratic interests, whether that’s “literature or medicine from the 18th century,” as Quaresma says.

The presence of the Biblioteca Joanina library is also key to the group’s expansion plan, which will center on additional historic university towns, such as Salamanca, Cambridge, and Bologna. “We want to create a path around Europe and only move inside that bubble,” Quaresma says. A bubble in which anyone should be able to get an excellent night’s sleep.