With its newly reopened Business and Senator Lounges in London Heathrow’s Terminal 2, updated ten years after the terminal’s opening, Lufthansa is bringing a modern aesthetic focussing on natural elements, warmer tones and a more residential feel.
These lounges (really one large lounge split in two with a door in the middle) are in many ways the default Star Alliance options in Heathrow’s Star Alliance terminal, especially for passengers whose flights depart from the main terminal rather than the satellite (home to lounges from Air Canada, Singapore Airlines and United).
The updates that Lufthansa has made to these two lounge spaces appear to be largely cosmetic, but they’re certainly welcome. The initial 2014 design of the lounges was what your author mentally called the “2001: A Lufthansa Odyssey” aesthetic also seen in Frankfurt, Munich and other Lufthansa locations — large, often noisy undivided spaces, lit very starkly from overhead with many expanses of curved white glossy plastics, together with a lot of leather in a dated medium-brown colour.
Not all of this has been removed, especially in the Business Lounge, the less prestigious of the two, but it has been softened and warmed throughout. As a whole, Lufthansa has turned up the warmth, texture and natural dials substantially within the Senator Lounge, and slightly on the Business Lounge side.
The Business Lounge sees welcome upgrades, bringing it up to par and improving the aesthetics. Image: Lufthansa
While many airlines provide better lounges for their paying business class passengers versus simply their frequent flyers, Lufthansa here continues its unique strategy of making the frequent flyer (Star Alliance Gold and equivalents) Senator Lounge superior to the Business lounge that business class passengers without status are allowed into.
The aesthetics of the updated spaces are more textured, much more relaxing, and, frankly, much more pleasant to look at. More natural elements have been brought into the spaces, and some of the more artificial-looking expanses of pale wood have been removed, including one swapped for a photo wall of London stock photo pastiches, an element that now breaks up the Business lounge into smaller sub-areas.
The London stock photo feature wall does a useful job in breaking up the Business Lounge space. Image: Lufthansa
The serried ranks of identical brown-or-grey chairs have thankfully been broken up, even if not removed entirely, and the lighting alone is worth the upgrade in the Senator lounge, with many warmer and gentler lamps bringing a much more relaxing colour temperature to the space. One does wonder, though, whether the exposed-coil Edison bulbs in the Senator lounge will date more quickly than perhaps Lufthansa might like, if this lounge design needs to last another decade until 2034.
Perhaps one or two of the lamps might have been omitted in favour of adding some power sockets to this (admittedly attractive, and smart as a room divider and noise absorber) banquette?
Six round ones on either side of the banquette are so close together that anyone sitting by the window will have to ask everyone else sitting on that side to move in order for them to be able to get out.
I’m sure some of these tables will be swiftly moved elsewhere by the lounge staff within seconds of the lounge opening, but it’s an odd decision to have made for staging purposes.
Overall, though, both lounges are a good improvement and a welcome upgrade — most so in the Senator Lounge.
Featured image credited to Lufthansa
