About Marion

Interior Design and Identity for Hospitality

I design places that can be felt.

For individual, owner-led hotels and distinctive hospitality destinations seeking renewal - without becoming generic, without losing their soul, and with a clear sense of budget.

Some properties hold more than is currently visible. A history. A family. A team. Guests who are looking for more than a beautiful room - a place to breathe, connect and feel a little at home.

Change may be ahead - for new guests, for the team or for the next generation.

That is where good hotel design begins for me: with the feeling that arises before anyone can explain it.

A wide, almost empty room in pale beige. On the right Marion Uhl sits on a long, low bench, her head tilted back, looking upwards. The rest of the room stays empty.

Experience shaped a point of view.

Design has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. As a child, I worked with clay, painted and built little houses with friends in the mountains from whatever we could find. That is where my joy in making things by hand is rooted, along with my love of places that do not feel polished and generic, but have soul.

For around 20 years, I have worked in specialised interior architecture and hospitality studios and contributed to more than 100 hotel projects - from individual properties to international brands.

Those years shaped me: high expectations, complex processes, real hotel operations and budgets that must be taken just as seriously as atmosphere and design.

Good design is not created by spending more, but through experience, clear priorities and a keen sense of where quality truly makes a difference.

The turning point came quietly.

It did not arrive as a loud break, but as an increasingly clear feeling:

I no longer wanted to design only beautiful surfaces.
I wanted the work to make a difference.

Places that make hosts proud.
Bring teams together.
Enable guests to connect with one another, with the place and with themselves.
And give the next generation the desire to carry a property forward.

I realised that my experience can have the greatest effect where a property has a story of its own and where the people behind it truly love it.

That is why I founded WONNE.

I want to bring my knowledge from major hospitality projects to where it can go deeper: to individual hotels and hospitality destinations that want to sharpen their own signature.

Places that do not need to become louder, but clearer.

Not trendier, but more meaningful.

Not more generic, but more genuine.

Expertise

Around 20 years

Hospitality interior design

More than 100

Hotel projects

From concept to implementation

Design and real-world hotel practice

Atmosphere + reality

Light, material, operations, budget and coordination

Dipl.-Ing. Innenarchitektur (FH)

What shapes me

I am back home in the countryside where I grew up. After twenty years, Frankfurt is not only the heart of Europe to me but has become a second home. Close to nature, hospitable, up for an adventure and happiest in motion.

Garden, forest, good music, friends and creative work ground me. I enjoy a great many things and would happily call myself an all-rounder — boredom is not something I know. When time allows I practise yoga, paint and throw pots, or head out on the gravel bike. And in winter I like jumping into cold water, unless there is snow and I am off on my new cross-country skis instead.

I like having people around me, and my door is always open. That mix of being grounded, open and curious about what is new also shapes my understanding of hospitality: honest, warm and uncomplicated. And that is exactly what I bring to every project.

Tall, dry summer grasses with scattered dark purple flower heads move in the wind, against a blue sky with white clouds.

Marion Uhl in a work apron in a pottery studio. She leans over a large clay bowl, laughing, her hands on the wet clay.

A hiker with poles stands on a rocky ridge against a blue sky. A small blue heart is painted on the pale stone in the foreground.

An evening gathering at a long table in a room hung with bunting. Candles on the table, the last daylight through the windows.

Quality does not need to be loud.

I believe in gentle luxury: time, calm, good materials and genuine encounters rather than status.

In durable and healthy materials.
In regional makers and good craftsmanship.
In design that still feels right many years from now.

And in sustainability as an attitude, not a style.

What belongs in a project is never decided by a formula.

It is decided by the place.
The people.
And what genuinely suits them.

Understand first. Then design.

At the beginning of every collaboration, I listen first: to the people behind the property, the team and the property itself.

From this, no predefined style world emerges, but a spatial identity that carries the place’s story forward and connects people.

The collaboration is personal, direct and on equal footing.

In the end, it should not feel like my design, but like the place itself - only clearer, more coherent and full of WONNE.

When a property is ready to sound more clearly like the people behind it, carry its story forward and connect people, everything begins with a conversation.

Direct contact by email