The Dean Berlin keeps the original paneling in its 81 guestrooms and paints it in soft mauves. The bathrooms retain their original tilework, the floors keep their existing mosaics, and the plaster walls are left patinated. The hotel occupies a late-19th-century building in Berlin’s Charlottenburg district and opened in February 2026 as the first property outside Ireland for The Dean, the independent hotel group with locations in Dublin, Cork, and Galway, with Munich and Miami to follow.
Interior designer Rachael Gowdridge led the project. She worked at Martin Brudnizki Design Studio and Ennismore International before founding her own studio in 2021, and her practice is built on layered interiors and bespoke pieces developed with artisans and craftspeople. Her project The Netty won Best UK Hotel Design at the Homes & Gardens Design Awards 2025. That same year, Homes & Gardens named her to its inaugural Next in Design list, and Hotel Designs included her in its Brit List Top 25 Interior Designers.
Original timber elements throughout the hotel sit directly beside expressive new joinery, and sharply defined thresholds separate one space from the next. Bold color and sculptural lighting are set against the period architectural details. In the bathrooms, new interventions are placed alongside the original tile. The same pairing of patinated plaster and existing mosaic with crisp new detailing carries from the public spaces through the corridors and into every room.
Each guestroom opens into a vestibule painted entirely in deep red, an enclosed threshold between the corridor and the bedroom, where the walls return to the mauve paneling. The bedrooms layer textiles and full-height drapery over the painted surfaces, and the bespoke furniture combines soft textiles, expressive patterns, and crafted details in unexpected material pairings.
The Cosy rooms and The Doubles use compact layouts with built-in storage and tactile finishes, larger categories add dedicated living areas, and the Balcony Rooms and Suites include private outdoor space. Bath amenities in every room were made exclusively for the hotel by fragrance house DS & Durga.
Benedict, the hotel’s bakery, restaurant, and bar, runs from early morning to late evening and serves guests and locals with an international menu built around house-made breakfast and brunch. Independent curator Thom Oosterhof assembled Wanderers, a collection of work by emerging and established German-based artists that begins at check-in with pieces by Xia Peng, Wolfgang Guenther, Ricky Lee Gordon, Erika Richter, and Wiebke Maria Wachmann and continues through the corridors and onto the guest floors.
The Dean Berlin
Uhlandstraße 49, 10719 Berlin-Bezirk Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, Germany
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