Warm Light and Low-Glare Create a Cozy Environment at this Dallas Eatery

There is a certain stereotype surrounding steakhouses: low lighting, dark finishes, and a decidedly masculine clientele. For Georgie, a new meat-centric restaurant in Dallas, GRT Architects and Dot Dash Lighting Design set out to challenge some of these assumptions. “We did not want to design a kind of a cave with dark finishes as the go-to,” says architect and founding partner Rustam Mehta. Instead, a welcoming atmosphere of warm light envelops guests as they cozy up in their plush red velvet banquettes to enjoy their meal.

The low glare and soft glow are a product of the cove lighting that Dot Dash integrated into the intricate, dish-shaped coffered ceiling system. Much of the restaurant’s design revolves around this element, which began as a solution for acoustic control but evolved into a method of breaking up space and providing a sense of enclosure. “The goal is to make rooms within the room,” Mehta says. “The mega-scale, asymmetrical coffers celebrate the floor plan.”

Custom table lamps and wall sconces (designed by GRT and produced by Flos) are evenly dispersed between the banquettes and along the wood-paneled walls. Together with a constellation of ceiling integrated downlights, they highlight not only the dining surface but the richness of the surrounding materials. The lamps, which are crafted out of offcuts from the marble and travertine floors, add a contrasting layer that also, says Mehta, serves to “blend overall ambience with human-scale accents.”

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