Inside The Laurus: Sentosa's Newest Luxury Hotel Where Design Tells a Story
What makes The Laurus different from other luxury hotels in Sentosa.
“One of the property’s greatest design challenges became one of its most defining features. The former hotel’s sweeping curved lobby had been open-plan, punctuated by numerous structural columns that, as Almeida notes, “appeared to be scattered everywhere”.
Considering the narrative and its residential approach, the P49 Deesign team decided to create a lobby that was smaller, with a series of salons to give guests the sense that they were in a luxurious Singaporean home.
“This strategy allowed us to control each of the spaces to give great proportion and residential scale, and also hide all of the structural columns within the new walls,” says Almeida.
Credit : https://www.sentosa.com.sg/en/get-inspired/sentosa-guides/the-laurus-luxury-hotel-sentosa-singapore
Inside The Laurus: Sentosa's Newest Luxury Hotel Where Design Tells a Story
“What makes The Laurus different from other luxury hotels in Sentosa.”
“One of the property’s greatest design challenges became one of its most defining features. The former hotel’s sweeping curved lobby had been open-plan, punctuated by numerous structural columns that, as Almeida notes, “appeared to be scattered everywhere”.
Considering the narrative and its residential approach, the P49 Deesign team decided to create a lobby that was smaller, with a series of salons to give guests the sense that they were in a luxurious Singaporean home.
“This strategy allowed us to control each of the spaces to give great proportion and residential scale, and also hide all of the structural columns within the new walls,” says Almeida.
Credit :https://www.sentosa.com.sg/en/get-inspired/sentosa-guides/the-laurus-luxury-hotel-sentosa-singapore
Inside The Laurus: Sentosa's Newest Luxury Hotel Where Design Tells a Story
Island Guide
As the first Luxury Collection resort in Singapore, The Laurus arrived on Sentosa Island with quiet confidence, redefining what an exclusive stay in Sentosa, Singapore can feel like. As the latest addition to Resorts World Sentosa (RWS), it offers a direct connection to WEAVE, the precinct’s newest lifestyle playground, and is mere steps away from RWS’s headline attractions.
Read More: The best things to do at WEAVE
Since opening its doors on 1 October 2025, the five-storey, all-suite resort has firmly positioned itself as a sanctuary for travellers seeking the best things to do in Sentosa, or staycationers planning a romantic weekend in a retreat that delivers both seclusion and seamless access.
But what truly sets The Laurus, a Luxury Collection Resort apart is not just proximity, but personality.
Unlike other global luxury hospitality brands – where familiarity is often expressed through uniformity – The Luxury Collection celebrates individuality. No two properties are designed to be the same. Instead, each hotel is shaped by the spirit of its destination – layered, contextual, and deeply rooted in place.
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What makes The Laurus different from other luxury hotels in Sentosa
The Laurus embraces this ideal wholeheartedly, with a design orchestrated by the award-winning Thai firm P49. The arrival experience sets the tone, as Carl Almeida, P49’s Managing Partner, explains: “The arrival into The Laurus was designed to be calming from the minute you enter the driveway.”
Guests glide through what feels like the private driveway of a grand home. A water feature, adorned with a whimsical owl sculpture, encourages a small pause before entry – a signal to slow down, observe, and settle in.
“The owl sculpture is a playful, yet relevant, part of the narrative that unfolds throughout the hotel, allowing guests to take time and appreciate these unexpected moments of surprise,” says Almeida. A species native to Southeast Asia, the Buffy Fish Owl was once found across Singapore’s mangroves.
Carved from the former shell of the Hard Rock Hotel (its external architecture left intact), The Laurus’s story began long before a single wall was redrawn.
Almeida explains: “We created the narrative of the hotel before we started any design… [It was] based on a residential experience… a home of a well-travelled Singaporean who over time had built up his home with art and collectables from his life’s experiences and journeys… but essentially it was a Singapore story.”
This story defines how guests move through the hotel. Instead of grandeur and repetition, The Laurus unfolds like a private estate. Every design choice, from space planning to furniture selection to artwork curation, leans into that story.
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How The Laurus was designed to feel like a private Singaporean home
One of the property’s greatest design challenges became one of its most defining features. The former hotel’s sweeping curved lobby had been open-plan, punctuated by numerous structural columns that, as Almeida notes, “appeared to be scattered everywhere”.
Considering the narrative and its residential approach, the P49 design team decided to create a lobby that was smaller, with a series of salons to give guests the sense that they were in a luxurious Singaporean home.
“This strategy allowed us to control each of the spaces to give great proportion and residential scale, and also hide all of the structural columns within the new walls,” says Almeida.
Now, instead of a vast, echoing expanse, guests enjoy the intimacy of salons – lounge areas designed on a human scale, branching off the main lobby. The lobby itself is luxurious without being pretentious; moulded wall panels, wainscoting, and a black-and-white colour palette hint at Sentosa’s past as a colonial outpost.
Here, art goes beyond decoration; a strong storytelling element is woven through. Commissioned works depicting scenes of daily life are displayed alongside archival photos of street scenes, as well as of Sentosa before 1970, when it was known as Pulau Blakang Mati.
Delicate drawings of cultural icons, such as kasut manek (Peranakan beaded slippers), celebrate Singapore’s rich heritage, while rattan armchairs – including elegant Peacock chairs that subtly reference the graceful birds roaming Sentosa – add texture and a sense of place.
Together, these elements give the impression of a cosmopolitan collector, someone worldly but also deeply appreciative of cultural nuances. At the same time, they provide a sense of locality, inviting guests to discover the history and traditions of Sentosa and Singapore.
Read More: Discover Sentosa’s military past and hidden heritage
How The Laurus guides guests through its spaces
At The Laurus, design is not simply aesthetic; it is experiential. A stay here feels immersive rather than imposed. Movement, too, feels intuitive – from arrival to lobby, from salon to suite. Wayfinding elements, therefore, were kept to a minimum.
“Following our transformation of the interior… there was minimal requirement for signage,” says Almeida. “It’s quite a simple building plan with essentially two wings of guestrooms, and each of these wings is accessed from the ground floor. The flow from one space to the next is seamless due to the simplicity and formality of the planning.”
The idea is for guests to experience the hotel’s attentive service, with staff always on hand to assist. This reinforces the feeling of being welcomed into a residence, not processed through a system. That being said, the owl motif makes an appearance at every lift landing in a dramatic stained-glass installation, becoming a reassuring (not to mention Instagrammable) figure.
Read More: Where to take some of the most Instagrammable shots in Sentosa
What are the suites at The Laurus like
Perhaps the most significant transformation, however, lies behind suite doors.
The previous configuration – “a hotel with more than 400 smaller-sized rooms which did not feel luxurious in proportion and also in terms of today’s expectation of luxury” – no longer aligned with contemporary definitions of comfort. The solution, Almeida offers, was bold and decisive: “We turned every two existing rooms into a single larger suite.”
The result is a collection of just 183 suites across four categories, each with a minimum size of 72 sqm (775 sq. ft.). But size alone was not the objective.
“These suites were also approached as a residential home, so we purposefully created separate spaces within the suites, rather than large, open-plan guestrooms,” explains Almeida. “The result was separate living rooms / bedrooms / bathrooms / walk-in-wardrobes which gave the residential feel that we were targeting.”
For guests, the difference is tangible. The separation of spaces introduces rhythm to the stay – a place to entertain, a place to retreat, a place to cleanse. By mirroring the cadence of home life, The Laurus succeeds in becoming a home away from home.
If the space planning achieves domestic bliss, so too does the design detailing. Here, moulded wall panels, classic wainscoting, louvred windows and geometric black-and-white bathroom floor tiles nod to Sentosa’s colonial heritage, but the execution feels crisp and modern rather than nostalgic.
Furnishings are intentionally restrained, with clean lines preferred over ornamentation, while soft textiles in seaside hues – turquoise, aqua, sand, sea foam green, warm wood browns and white – create a soothing, resort-inspired palette.
Carefully placed objets d’art complete the picture, adding personality and warmth so that each suite feels less like a room, and more like a thoughtfully assembled home by the sea.
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