We met with Ita O’Brien to chat about how Versatile delivers stunning solutions to the hospitality industry.
Versatile is so much more than tiles. The company, based in Navan and in business for 40 years, offers residential clients and businesses a perfect synergy of creative and practical. It delivers luxury tiling and bathrooms, heating and ventilation systems, and steam and sauna “wellness” solutions, as well as a dedicated design offering.
“We really are a one-stop shop,” explains Ita O’ Brien, Head of Interior Specifications at Versatile. “Our proposition is unique: we work with clients at the design stages, provide the materials, which are often highly bespoke, and offer an above-and-beyond aftersales service. This lends itself extremely well to hospitality projects, and we’re on our eighth large hotel project in two years, a testament to our approach.”
Design-Led Expertise: Ita O’Brien and the Power of Specification
Ita joined Versatile five years ago after spending almost two decades in the buying industry. Her experience spanned monitoring and forecasting trends, visiting trade shows, developing products at the factory stage, working on costings, and staying abreast of technical developments. Versatile clients now benefit from this valuable expertise.
“I work in a team with three talented, dedicated women, and my role within that mainly involves working with architects, designers and developers to help them achieve a particular look and feel or aesthetic,” Ita tells us. “To save them trawling through different brands and product categories, my team and I do the heavy lifting, finding solutions and presenting them.
We are extremely hands-on during projects and carry out site checks and floor plan assessments to ensure what the client wants can happen. The beauty of working with us is we offer bespoke solutions – for example, a vanity unit is usually a standard size, but we have factories that can make odd sizes. A hotel could have 300 rooms with seven different vanity sizes made by our factory.”
From Vision to Wellness Reality: The Chancery Hotel Project
The team is riding high after successfully completing a project with The Chancery Hotel in Dublin City. The client had a vision for a wellness area and came to Versatile for a sauna, but Ita says that initial meeting quickly evolved, with Versatile offering the full spa solution.
“The client didn’t know the extent of what we offered until they came in and walked the showroom with me. Then the conversation started: they needed tiling, taps, the whole front of house redone, and a relaxing wellness area. We told them we could do it all, so we worked closely with the hotel’s design team, Horan Rainsford Architects, to achieve it. Along with our factory, who make our bespoke sauna and steam rooms, we designed the full spa area, incorporating a sauna, steam room, experience shower, mini pool and ice fountain.”
Bespoke at Every Level: Craft, Collaboration and Factory Precision
We ask Ita to take us through the process, from initial planning to project completion. “Every project is different, but The Chancery took about eight months for sign off,” she tells us.
“We started by taking a step back and assessing the floor plan of the area; where are the services, water, drains, and plant room? How many people will be staying in the hotel at any given time? What will the flow of people using it be like? From there, we presented the design on paper, along with finishes, like tile, wood, and brassware. We also created mood boards and sat down with the design team and the hotel owners and manager for their input. Once everything was signed off, the fun really started.”
The fun, Ita says, was bringing the plan to life. This involved the Versatile team going back and forth to the Italian factory it works with to ensure everything was exactly as agreed, down to checking the tones of the wood and tiles.
“There’s a lot of handholding,” she says, “but it’s the part we love because we know what will happen in the end.” Ita says this level of liaising with the factory is a core element of Versatile’s success. “We need to be able to communicate to clients exactly what we are offering, so educating ourselves on every product is key. To stay up to date, we visit the factories to watch the production process from start to finish, go on regular courses, and get dedicated training from our suppliers.”
The Chancery’s spa is a stunning, calming space, and despite being just off one of Dublin’s busiest streets, feels like it could be anywhere in the world. This was all in the planning, Ita tells us.
“We wanted to make it look beautiful, but more importantly feel tranquil. Everything in the area has been put there intentionally. The layout, the colours, the textures, they all needed to talk to each other and make sense. The goal was to achieve a wow factor, and this is reflected in the bespoke details, from the manually inlaid gold mosaic tiles on the pillars, to the touchless sensor technology in the bathrooms, and the stunning Connemara marble tile that clads the reception desk, chosen for its nod to Irishness without being twee.”
Heritage Meets Innovation: Solving Complex Hospitality Challenges
The Versatile team has also worked with Millimetre Design on the refurbishment of The Mercantile Hotel in Dublin City, a landmark property steeped in history. The design brief was clear from the outset: meld old world Dublin with modernity. Ita says this was realised beautifully.
“Our work with The Mercantile is a great example of Versatile’s solutions-oriented ethos,” she tells us. “One challenge was creating bespoke shower doors for several rooms that are under conservation. We had to tile the walls first, and then order the doors from the factories, which were several different sizes, some requiring multiple panels of glass. The doors also had to be hinged and pivoted in a special way to ensure they worked for each space. For example, they can’t open and hit off the toilet.”
Sourcing special basins was the next challenge: “The Mercantile’s owner saw massive basins in the Hard Rock Hotel in New York,” Ita explains. “There was nothing similar available in Ireland or the European market, so we worked with a factory in Germany that makes incredibly robust pressed steel basins to any size and specifications. They created the basins and even lasered them with the hotel name and added a hygiene glaze for easier cleaning.”
Ita says the team is now poised to take on the next project.
“We’re ready,” she smiles. “A good analogy is it’s like running a marathon. When you’re in the middle of it you can’t imagine doing another one, but as soon as you’ve finished, you’re on a high and want to do it all over again!”
She tells us the team is looking forward to continuing to deliver exceptional work.
“We have been in business for four decades for a reason. I’ve never worked for a company before where every member of staff is so invested in the result, but that’s because the way we see it, our customers are for life. We always want them to pick up the phone and call us, whether it’s for another project they have coming down the line, a solution, maintenance, or replication. The ethos we live by at Versatile is the customer is king.”
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