Achieving Nirvana: Buddha-Bar Dubai Refurbished

To use the parts of the venue nobody was using. The client wanted the back area opened up and the restaurant extended, and the private dining and tatami rooms at the rear brought back into service. A new open-plan Robata Grill kitchen was added for live cooking, with bay windows onto Dubai Marina. One ground-floor lounge became a 20-seat private dining room that can be opened to the rest of the venue, its walls carrying oversized Buddha heads in gold, painted by Steve Chambers.

Because the room is dark and dimmed. The original scheme leaned on the gold and red signature of every Buddha-Bar; the refurbishment introduced vibrant greens and purples that look almost neon in daylight and become legible jewel tones under evening lighting. The Chinese dragon is the Dubai venue’s own signature stamp, worked into the walls, the chair and curtain embroidery, the lighting, and the mirror frames; the tassels and the colour scheme are drawn from the Ottoman era, and the light timber floor was replaced with dark walnut and stencilled black stone that runs from the entrance through the corridors and into the bathrooms.