Café Rouge is the UK's premier French cafe brand with broad all-day offering of classic French dishes and wines. The first Café Rouge opened in South-West London in 1989 and now with over 125 restaurants throughout the UK, it is one of the country's most recognisable brands.

The challenge

Keane, an award winning brand agency, was working with Café Rouge to both redesign existing cafes and carry out the interior design on new venues. They wanted to use mood lighting to create an authentic feeling French bistro environment.

"As part of our project with café Rouge, we wanted to use lighting to create a warm, glowing atmosphere," explained Brook Millard, an interior designer at Keane Brands. "We wanted to ensure that we created a comfortable atmosphere for customers to sit, eat and drink."

The solution

Starting with the refurbishments of the Leamington and Henley branches of Café Rouge, the interior design team were keen to use Chantelle Lighting's exclusive warm LED bulbs.

Brook said: "Our design plans for the venues included a wide range of pendants, wall lights and lamps but for us the bulbs used in these  light fittings was just as important as the design of the fittings.

"We didn't want harsh white lighting to be used in the venues because this wouldn't create the ambience we were looking for. We were really impressed with the warmth of the LED bulbs which Chantelle Lighting have developed with the manufacturer as well as the fact that they could be fully dimmed if needed.

"For us and our client, Café Rouge, energy efficiency was also a very important consideration. The bulbs supplied by Chantelle Lighting only use around 2% of the energy of traditional bulbs and last up to 25 times longer than other bulbs which will save Café Rouge money on long term replacements as well as reducing their energy bills."

The result

Following the installation of Chantelle Lighting's exclusive LED bulbs in the Leamington and Henley cafés, they have now been used in refurbishments in Wellington Street, Bromley, Hampstead, Milton Keynes, Bristol Cribbs Causeway, Reading, Pinner, Blackheath, Southgate.

Hitchin and Haywards Heath with plans to continue using them in future projects for Café Rouge.

"The LED bulbs work fantastically in all of the cafés we have worked on and have really helped to create the mood we were looking for. We have been so impressed with the bulbs that we definitely have plans to use them in projects for other clients in the near future."