Designing for Commercial Projects
Commercial work and interior design go hand in hand and correlate. Although the fundamentals remain the same, there are differences with constraints, clients, compliance, and scale.
When a residential designer enters the commercial design world for the first time, there is a humbling experience. Some of the setbacks include a much sharper brief, stricter specifications for material, and tighter deadlines. The biggest difference is that the client is usually not the end user, and that is what makes the work rewarding as the projects are sizable and impactful.
This section focuses on the different project types and other technical aspects that are unique to commercial design.
Workplace & Office
In the office design world, the last five years have experienced a dramatic change in comparison to the last twenty years. The office has not been eliminated with the introduction of hybrid work, but its purpose has. Now, a work brief is not a design for “desks for everyone”. Rather, the most successful infrastructure offers a productive reason for staff to show up to the office and an inviting reason for them to leave only once the workday is over.
This section describes the design that has been effective, the design that has not been effective, and the design that has caused a positive change in work behavior as opposed to being visually appealing.
Hospitality
As it’s at the intersection of design and art, hospitality offers the most diverse venues including restaurants, hotels, and bars. Interior design gets the most constructive feedback, and hospitality is one area of design where the most visible results are experienced. Because design concepts are repeated and executed verbatim, there exists a gap between what is expected and what is delivered.
Brand expression, guest journey, durability — these all seem to go together, sometimes even end up being compared on the same wall. The best designers regard this as the intersection of design and operations, not design alone.
Retail
Retail design maintains a balance between time spent and sales made, between an eye-catching store and the costs of each sale. Whether the project is an established store, a department store, or a month-long pop-up, the questions remain the same, even if they differ in answer.
This section outlines what challenges good retail design is effectively addressing, and explains why so many concepts that look promising in presentations ultimately fail in the real world.
Healthcare, Education & Wellness
Spatial design across clinics, care settings, gyms and spas. Here, the users are often vulnerable and trying to feel better. At schools and clinics, users are often distracted and/or learning.
In these areas, regulations are stronger than in any other aspect and the human factor is softer yet harder to define. These are the spaces that usually reward designers that can contain the most contrasts.
Compliance & Contract
This is the area of commercial design that domestic designers often find most alarming. Building regulations. Fire safety standards. Accessibility standards. Construction contract specifications. The documents you don’t often encounter within residential projects, the language they’re written in, and the order they tend to arrive.
There is nothing alarming about it. Much of it has to be acquired through research and practice, as this part of commercial design is not often encountered.
Where now
This section accompanies Designing for Domestic Projects, applying the same ideas to a different context. If you’re earlier in your career and deciding whether to take the commercial route, start with Becoming an Interior Designer.