5 Trends Not to Miss
What does your interior space say about you? About your products, your business? What message are you conveying to your audience? Long gone are the cold, sterile “Rack & Stack” customer experience in retail stores. This trend is also showing itself in work environments in places like cubicles and tiny work spaces. As we head into the next decade, interior design trends continue to grow and change, embracing the flexible, open concept layouts that are experiential, non-restrictive, comfortable, and collaborative. Five new trends are emerging as the front-runners in the race to enhance your customers experiences and to nurture customers.
- Interactivity & Media
- Bringing the Outdoors In
- Collaboration Spaces
- Innovative Lighting
- Resi-mmercial Furniture
INTERACTIVITY & MEDIA
Technology. It’s not going away. In fact, it’s ramping up. Every year, we find companies finding new creative ways to implement technology to grow their business. In order to keep the “home away from home” feel that many companies seek to provide, the technology has a personal touch – literally. More touch screens, touch recognition, and remote access add to the connectivity of the space. Inmar’s Innovation Lab boasts an enormous wall-mounted touch screen that is user-friendly and that can easily be connected to wirelessly.
COLLABORATION SPACES
The move toward collaborative work spaces isn’t very new, but it’s often not done well. Collaborative areas usually involve a long conference and lots of chairs, which is low-level functional, but not much else. Stellar collaborative work spaces offer comfort, access to information, tech access, and plenty of space. Scott Safety’s work space encourages brainstorming and teamwork in their engineers. At one glance, the environment “feels” like it’s ready to work – collaborative tables but with individual desk sections and files, Wi-Fi ready, large screens available, and more.
BRINGING THE OUTDOORS IN
Every business out there – from grocery stores to dentist offices – are bringing the outdoors in. Formerly foreign office building textures like light and raw wood, rattan, stone, fabrics, and plants are commonplace now. And a little goes a long way. Simply adding a natural texture or some outdoors-y prints to a wall does wonders. Having a plant in the corner or hanging in front of a window changes the feel of a room. Facility Source transformed the Dometic on the shelf display for their remote controls into an outdoor feel with an iconic image that is warm, welcoming for the customer.
INNOVATIVE LIGHTING
Lighting is the least expensive and most dramatic element in any room. It can transform a room from dark to light, from cold to warm, from exclusive to inclusive. Whether you’re wanting to bring energy to a room with LED lights or focus with directional spot lighting or warmth with soft white lights, the experience of a room comes from its lighting. The map below, featured on the wall of Smiths Detection in Knoxville, adds a strength, warmth and an energy to the room. With edge-lit CNC-cut stainless steel panels, the map edges glow and it highlights the company’s global facilities. Not only is this lit wall strong and informational, it adds a depth and an artistic flair to the room.
RESI-MMERCIAL FURNITURE
Because people can literally work anywhere these days, the once clear-cut lines between home and office are now blurrier than ever. First, it was “casual Fridays” and then it was the open office design. While people will probably always embrace wearing jeans on Fridays, the open office design posed the problem of almost eliminating privacy. In an effort to provide privacy and collaboration, companies now look for a balance of open and private work spaces. The “home away from home” feel of contemporary offices boast lots of textures – wood, glass, metal, plants, fabrics – and natural lighting to simulate a living room environment.
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