Theming Your Home Bar
Giving Your Bar a Name and a Story.
Bring your home bar to life with a personality all its own.
What’s the Story of Your Bar?
Part of the fun of creating a home bar is giving it a name, a theme and a backstory.
After you decide you want to add a bar to your home, take a little time to add some personality to your bar area. The ambiance of any bar is part of its charm and allure. I know people who have very elaborate tiki bars — filled with all kinds of tiki related items — and themed with a tiki vibe. This can also spill over into the drinks you serve or special “happy hour” cocktails or other concoctions.
Your bar name is important as well. It should reflect you and your family in some way, including the ambiance you want to have for your guests. Is your desired theme:
Tiki Bar style?
Inspired by a prohibition speakeasy of the 1920s?
A cosmopolitan city lounge?
You get the idea.
Whatever theme you create, it helps to inject a little of yourself and your personality into the naming and theming of the bar. That way it takes on a vibe of its own and feels a little more like a destination than just a bar counter in the corner.
How the Grand One Lounge came to be
The Grand One Lounge was created in a way that reflects our family and our interests. We enjoy Disney vacations and have an overall Disney Resort North theme to our backyard and the basement of our home (where the Grand One Lounge is located. However, our theming style us upscale and understated from a Disney perspective (in that the Disney inspiration is subtle). So if you are not a Disney travel fan, you will still appreciate the comfort and styling of the bar. If you are a Disney fan, you will notice a number of subtle nods to various Disney travel destinations.
The Grand One Lounge name was derived from an upscale Disney experience. We enjoy theming that is upscale, so we created the name as a nod to the Grand 1 Yacht, which is a 52’ SeaRay that you can rent to cruise the waters of Walt Disney World from the Grand Floridian Resort and Spa.
So the Grand One Lounge has a very subtle yacht/nautical theme, but not something that would be too in your face. I created a unique logo for the lounge and printed coasters, cocktail napkins and so on to add to the overall immersive bar experience.
How the Grand One Lounge has evolved
Before creating the theming and name for the bar, we lived with it for awhile to get a better sense of what we wanted it to be and how we were actually using the bar area when guests drop by. As a result the Grand One Lounge has evolved from a bar into a full lounge area.
The Lounge areas of the Grand One Lounge
After we had guests over to the bar a few times, I realized that it made sense for the basement area surrounding the bartop to become an extension of the main bar area. This is how the lounge areas were created and it was at this time that the Grand One Lounge name was created.
The Grand One Lounge in its entirety consists of the main bar area, an adjacent pub style lounge area with two pub tables (with chairs) and a full-size foosball table. There is a darts area, a TV lounge and the billiards room located next to the darts area. All of this makes for a true lounge experience and the theming and nomenclature is consistent across all areas of the Grand One Lounge.