Our House
A late-night lounge bar that needed a site as cinematic as the room.
Client
Our House Lounge
Industry
Hospitality · Lounge bar
Year
2026
Stack
Next.js 16 · React 19 · GSAP · Lenis smooth scroll · WebGL aurora · Vercel
Scope
Brand-led landing experience · Editorial photo gallery (lazy + responsive) · Reservation request flow with WhatsApp follow-up · Menu + nights-on schedule · POPIA cookie banner + privacy policy
Status
In production
The problem
Lounge bars sell a feeling, not a list of facts. The owner had been using a Linktree-style page that looked identical to every other late-night venue on Instagram — flat photos, generic fonts, no atmosphere. Walk-ins were strong on weekends but bookings for the back lounge and the DJ nights were almost nonexistent because nobody could tell from the link what they were actually walking into.
Our approach
We treated the homepage like the front door of the venue. Dark warm palette, slow cinematic loading, hand-picked photography, and a WebGL aurora layer that drifts behind the type — subtle on desktop, switched off on slow mobile connections. The whole site reads top-to-bottom like a teaser trailer, then drops into the practical stuff (hours, menu, bookings) once you're already in the mood.
Smooth-scroll, but cheap on data
Lenis handles the smooth-scroll feel without nuking phone performance. The aurora is GPU-rendered but is fully disabled when prefers-reduced-motion is set, and the editorial gallery uses Next.js Image with priority hints so only the visible row downloads on first paint. On a Cape Town 4G connection the page is interactive in under 2 seconds.
Bookings without a heavy platform
Instead of plugging into a R899/month reservation SaaS, we built a lightweight request form that captures party size, night, and contact preference, then drops straight into a WhatsApp message to the manager. No subscription, no third-party data leaving the country, and the owner can change the rules at the source any time.
Production-ready, not a tech demo
Everything that makes the site feel "made-for-them" — the cursor, the iridescent type treatment, the chapter rules between sections — is built on the same Forge base system we use across every build. That's why we can ship something this opinionated in two weeks instead of two months, and why care + edits stay cheap after launch.
- →Build complete; awaiting domain + DNS hand-over from client before public launch
- →Owner receives full code + hosting access on go-live (already in the launch pack)
- →Reservation flow routes straight to WhatsApp — no SaaS in the loop
- →Page weight under 1.4 MB on mobile despite the full-bleed photography
- →Lighthouse staging: 96 Performance · 100 Accessibility · 100 Best Practices · 100 SEO
Ready when you are
A 50% deposit gets us started
this week.
June 2026 build slots are open. We reply to every brief within 4 working hours.