From space management to CX, there are a lot of potential benefits in hiring a professional interior designer to design your business facility.
Establishing a new business takes a lot of upfront investment.
Whether this comes from equity, or debt, or both, it’s natural – and logical – to keep an eye on cash flow, and analyze the benefits of each expense before deciding whether to incur it or not.
One such expense would be, whether you should go for a professional designer to design the interiors of your business facility.
You may have some favorite colors of your own, and an idea for how to organize the layout.
Nevertheless, there are a lot of potential benefits a professional designer may offer your business.
Here are the top 5 benefits of hiring an interior designer for your business facility.
Designers do more than select pretty colors
While aesthetics is a major part of interior design, it’s hardly the only aspect.
Interior design is a multidisciplinary field; and an interior designer plans their designs with a lot more in mind than just color schemes.
They might be able to design solutions to issues at your business facility you might never have noticed till after opening your place for business.
Designers can boost customer experience
Say you’re running a business like this Orange County escape room.
As an escape room owner, you would know things like
- What escape themes to have at your escape room business.
- How to best acquire props for your escape rooms.
- How to train your game masters.
However, take these questions
- How should the lobby be designed to make players feel welcome?
- Can a route be designed for the team inside an escape room to leave without being seen by the next team, which is waiting to enter?
A good interior designer would be able to spot such issues, talk them over with you, and design solutions, if you want them to.
Designers can improve space management
Going back to the previous example of an Orange County escape room.
You’ll pay rent/taxes at commercial rates for your premises, right?
So, you’d want to get all the juice you can from them.
Say, you want to start off with 1 escape game, gather inputs from players on what kind of escape theme they would prefer, and then introduce one more game a year later, based on that input.
How can you save space at your premises, so that you can add an extra room later, without having to buy/rent more space?
An interior designer would be able to help you with this issue – space management is a part of interior design.
Designers can oversee the construction of your business facility
Just like space management, project management is a core part of interior design.
A professional designer would be able to oversee the construction of your business facility:
- They can make sure it’s proceeding on time, and as per the agreed budget.
- They can keep an eye on the quality of materials being used and work being done.
- They can identify inefficiencies in the construction process, and suggest improvements.
So, if you were thinking of opening an escape room in Chicago, you’d have the freedom to choose how much attention you pay to the construction of your escape room, potentially freeing up time to handle other matters.
Professional designers tend to have professional networks
Any professional interior designer worth their salt will have a network of construction professionals needed at various stages of the construction process.
This help you by:
- Shortening the time needed to identify professionals to handle each stage of construction.
- Possibly yielding good deals on supply and labor costs.
- Ensuring quality of work, since your designer’s reputation will be on the line.
Which can prove immensely beneficial when you’re starting your own business.
A 5 step process for hiring an interior designer for your business premises
Decide on what kind of service you want
Interior designers provide both consulting services, and complete project management services.
In consulting, they’ll discuss your project with you, work out requirements, and present you with a detailed design plan. Implementation is up to you.
In complete project management, they’ll handle both planning the design, and implementation.
Obviously, you will be billed more for complete project management.
Please note that if you’re going for consulting, you can reach out to any designer in the world, because consultation is typically handled online, and geographical distances don’t enter the equation.
Look through designers’ work
You can consult with other businesses similar to yours whether they hired the services of an interior designer; and whether they would recommend anyone.
You can also consult designers’ work yourself.
- You can search for interior designers on Pinterest.
- You can look through websites like Houzz, which is an interior design and home improvement website.
Shortlist designers
Shortlist 4 designers, 2 from those recommended by your peer businesses, and the rest from your own review of designers’ work.
Schedule an initial consultation
In such a consultation, typically, you will tell the designer about your business, and what services you need from them.
They should present you with a basic
- Plan of the project
- Tentative timeline
- Budget estimate
Nothing too detailed, since, after all, this is only an initial consultation; however, it will give you an idea of what you can expect from each of your shortlisted candidates.
Select your designer
Don’t go for the lowest budget, or the shortest timeline.
Carefully study all the design proposals, and consider which comes closest to your business requirements.
If necessary, you can discuss with a fellow business owner.
Finalize your design agreement
Having selected your designer, strike a legal agreement with them, clearly outlining
- Your project requirements.
- Their exact responsibilities.
- A detailed schedule.
- A budget.
It may be a good idea to have a lawyer look through this agreement.
Once the agreement is finalized, let the building begin!
