Restaurant Interior Design

Restaurant Interior Design Considerations

Interior design is a tremendously important aspect of any restaurant. If you're in the planning stages of opening a restaurant, if you already own one and are thinking of making changes, you will need to think about it carefully. Interior design is an awful lot more than deciding what colour to paint the walls and which light fittings to use.
There are 3 main considerations to take into account when designing any public, commercial space; and restaurants are no different. They are function/flow, marketing and ambience. Other people may use different terms for these aspects but they will generally refer to the same things.
restaurant interior designFunction/flow
The way you use your space is of the utmost importance. This is principally linked to the layout of your design and how much space you allow yourself. For restaurants specifically, you need to take into account the daily movements of your waiting staff and customers. There needs to be enough space to allow both ease of movement (particularly the waiters) but you obviously want to cram in as many tables as possible within these constraints so as to fill your restaurant to its full capacity.
Make sure there are good routes to and from the kitchen and that all the tables are easily accessible. Give your customers enough space between tables to create a feeling of privacy, but not so much that you are denying yourself more customers.
The way you design your space will affect the way it is used. So think carefully about how people will be moving around in it. Ideally, you want to design a space that will allow both customers and staff to move how you want them to, rather than being constrained by the layout.
Marketing
Equally important to the function is the look of the restaurant. Before designing your restaurant, you will need to consider what demographic you are aiming for. You probably have an idea of this already based on the type of food you'll be serving and the area in which your restaurant is/is going to be, and this should have been covered in your business plan, so we won't touch on it here.
What you need to consider is what kind of style your demographic likes. You want them to pass your restaurant, look inside, and what to come in. Have a look at your competition locally and further afield and see what they're doing. If you are re-designing rather than designing, perhaps ask some of your existing customers what they think.
The look you choose will likely appeal to certain types of people and put off others so you have to be very careful. If you go up-market you will appeal to young professionals (for example) but put off the cheap and cheerful crowd. Equally, if you go down-market, the young professional crowd will turn their nose up at you.
Ambiance
The ambiance is really a combination of the preceding two considerations. It is as much about space as it is about the look and lighting. Having designed your restaurant to attract customers and function well, the key thing here is to consider your design from the point of view of a paying customer, and to adjust it for a pleasant dining experience that they will want to repeat. You can have the greatest looking, most functional restaurant in the world and it may well bring in customers the first time, but if you don't provide a good ambiance, you will never get return customers.
Obviously there are other factors that will determine the success or failure of a restaurant, but interior design plays a major part and must be given due consideration.
For more restaurant interior design please visit ResidentUK, UK based interior designers providing professional commercial and residential interior design.
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