Are you looking to add a tropical touch to your restaurant, beachfront hotel, or resort? One of the easiest ways to make the atmosphere feel more fun and comfortable for your clients is adding a tiki bar. Commonly, a tiki bar is a small tiki hut, but it’s undoubtedly filled with huge adventures of flavors. There are tons of ideas out there, so we’ll present our favorite tiki bar ideas and designs here. Our tips and decorations will take enjoyment & vacation vibes to the next level.
Tiki Bar Ideas: Take Enjoyment & Vacation Vibes to the Next Level
What Is a Tiki Bar?
A tiki bar is a tiki-themed drinking establishment. It serves elaborate cocktails like Margarita, Mojito, Hula Dancer, Pain Killer, Mai Tai, and many more delicious drinks.
As we said earlier, a tiki bar is a smaller tiki hut. The building materials are the same; it has a thatched roof with a cypress log frame supporting it. You’ll mostly find them by the poolside or shoreline.
And like most tiki huts, a tiki bar has open sides. And these tiki-themed bars add a tropical touch that elevates the vacation vibes of your hotel or resort.
Your customers will feel relaxed in a tropical paradise while enjoying their favorite drinks.
Tiki bars also come in various styles, shapes, and sizes. You can choose from single-sided, L-shaped tikis, double L-shaped, or an entire square structure (with open sides, obviously).
Other tiki bars are the complete establishment. These bars are more prominent and can host a larger number of people. So, you can design and build your custom tiki bar to meet your business’ needs.
8 Tiki Bar Ideas that Add Flavor to Your Establishment
- Build an Authentic Seminole Tiki Hut
- Use Wooden Furniture
- Add Tropical Décor & Seminole Art
- Lighting
- Water Features
- Warm Nights with Fire Pits
- Use Seminole Wood Carvings
- Thatch Beach Umbrella
Build an Authentic Seminole Tiki Hut
One of the best tiki bar ideas is building an authentic Seminole tiki hut. The traditional way to build a lasting and reliable tiki hut roof is by using selected and freshly cut palm fronds.
We all know that few thatching materials bring tropical authenticity and freshness as natural palm fronds do. So, adding a genuine tiki hut construction in your hotel, restaurant, or resort is a superb tropical feature that will keep bringing customers back.
Use Wooden Furniture
Another important tiki bar idea is to use wooden furniture. A tiki bar is a tiki-themed drinking establishment; thus, it must have wooden stools or chairs.
But make sure you only use furniture that made from treated wood. In this way, you’ll avoid attracting termites and other wood pests.
By prioritizing these tiki bar necessities, vacationers can enjoy their drinks while watching the shoreline and sea.
Bamboo furniture is also a great option that matches perfectly with your tiki bar.
Another vital part of the tiki bar is its wooden countertops. You don’t want to ruin the ambiance by adding concrete, metal, or other elements that don’t go with the original tiki hut design.
Add Tropical Décor & Seminole Art
Another brilliant tiki bar idea is adding tropical décor.
So, how can you add authentic tropical island vibes to your bar?
You can décor your bar with Seminole artworks and crafts. Some pieces of art are affordable, but others can cost you an arm or leg.
Never miss adding tiki torches in your bar.
A tiki torch is a pole-mounted torch, typically made of bamboo, that originated in the tiki culture of the mid-20th-century United States.
A tiki torch is one of the most popular decorations that elevate the tropical island aesthetic. Besides being a vital décor element, some tiki torches use Citronella oil as fuel and insect repellent.
Moreover, don’t forget that a tropical paradise features live plants, bamboo trees, and always palm trees.
If you create the perfect tropical island décor, you’ll have a breathtaking place where your clients can sit to sip on their favorite summer drinks.
Lighting: Add a Mysterious Yet Intimate Ambience
The tiki bar in your hotel or restaurant should reflect tropical island vibes. When it comes to tiki bar lighting, you need to be careful. That’s because a tiki bar should have a mysterious yet intimate ambiance.
And how do you achieve an exotic and intimate ambiance?
Luckily, a perfect tiki bar doesn’t have much light. You can achieve this using low-wattage and colored lights. It’s a good idea to put lights with fixtures that restrict much light from getting out.
You should install 15 to 30-watt bulbs to produce good tiki bar lighting. Low-wattage bulbs can make the tiki ambiance look dull. That’s why you need to add variety using colored light bulbs.
Critiki News, an expert blogger about tiki huts, recommends using any color of the rainbow.
Of course, for this to look awesome, the light luminosity needs to be low. Instead, we recommend red, red orange, orange, yellow orange, yellow, and yellow green.
Why?
It’s simple!
These are the warm colors or spring & summer colors. And for sure, these colors will create the perfect tropical vibe in your tiki bar.
Add Water Features Near Your Bar
You want to portray a tropical island ambiance in your business. Now let me ask you this: in the simplest of terms, what an island is? It’s a piece of land surrounded by water.
Great! Land and water! Tropical vacations need sun, land, and water. With that being said, you must add water features.
You can build your tiki bar next to a pool. Building a poolside tiki bar is one of the most brilliant ideas a human brain has ever conceived.
Click on the following link to take a look at the awesome tiki huts that can make your guests feel like in a tropical paradise.
You could also add more tropical flavor to your business by building or installing a mini waterfall, creating a small water pond, or even adding an aquarium.
One great idea that we love is to buy a bamboo cascading fountain. This bamboo fountain is the perfect water feature for a tiki bar.
All the features mentioned above will enhance your restaurant, hotel, or beachfront resort’s summer vibe.
Warm Nights with Fire Pits
One thing that can warm up nights in a tiki bar, besides alcohol and dancing, is a fire pit.
Be careful about fire and tiki huts. They are a glowing mixture. What happens is that flame, fire, or embers are a risky endeavor in a tiki bar. A tiki bar has a lot of flammable organic elements like wood and dry palm thatch.
If you’re planning to build a fire pit near your tiki bar, you have to be careful.
We advise to build all fire pits at least 15 to 20 feet away from your tiki bar, tiki umbrella, or any other thatched/wooden structure.
You could take extra precautions, which will allow you to have a safe fire near your tiki bar.
You can buy a pre-made stone fire pit or hire a reliable stonemason to build it. Other great idea is to put only non-flammable furniture or features around the fire pit.
Our last piece of advice is to build the fire pit as far away as possible so that it won’t be considered a fire hazard.
Use Seminole Wood Carvings and Dolls
Give an original touch to your tiki bar by hanging wood carvings, placing wood statues and wood dolls.
Many Seminole wood carvings depict the daily lives of tribe members or represent a tribe man or woman.
Also, Seminole wooden dolls are one-of-a-kind decorations for your tiki bar. These dolls are delicately carved in wood. Then, they are dressed with a traditional Seminole patchwork to represent the special characteristics of Seminole culture.
The important thing is to adorn your bar with genuine Seminole crafts.
But you don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars in doing so.
For instance, this Faceless art doll is worth 80 dollars. And it would help to decorate your tiki bar.
Here is another Seminole artifact store I found on Google, the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum Store.
If you live in Miami, you most likely have found a nearby store where you can get genuine Seminole artifacts.
Install a Thatch Beach Umbrella
A thatch beach umbrella is an alternative to the usual tiki bar set-up.
This beach bar could create a cozy and intimate hangout for visitors who aren’t fans of big gatherings. A thatch beach umbrella is perfect when you have a small space to install it in your business.
A great way to enjoy a thatch beach umbrella is to lay back on a bamboo beach chair alongside your soul mate, watching the sunset while sipping on your favorite drink.
As a business owner or property manager, you want these special spaces to last for years.
Being a thatched roof, if you want your tiki umbrella to last, you’ll need to use quality materials and have an expert thatch it.
But there are other factors that affect the life span of a thatched roof that you should be aware of.
Create the Perfect Tropical Ambience Following Our Tiki Bar Ideas
Creating a tiki themed bar is not an easy endeavor. We recommended these eight tiki bar ideas because we believe it will create a genuine Seminole tiki bar in your business establishment.
Remember that your tiki bar’s primary goal is to make your clients have the finest tropical vacations. In case you need help to create an authentic tiki bar, you can contact a reliable tiki hut builder.
We hope your guests have the most unforgettable vacation time. So, they continue to come back and back again to your business establishment. Cheers!