What Is Commercial Interior Design?

Ever been to an airport, a restaurant, or a hotel? Then you’ve seen the results of commercial interior design.

Commercial interior designers develop attractive and practical spaces for commercial properties. It’s their responsibility to make sure these spaces work well for both the business owners and their customers.

Are you a design professional looking to branch out into interior design for commercial spaces?

In this 5-minute read, you’ll learn everything you need to know about the commercial interior design profession like:

• What is commercial interior design?

• Key stages of the commercial design process

• Ways to leverage technology and commercial design best practices to grow your business

Let’s get started with the differences between residential and commercial interior design.

Residential vs. Commercial Interior Design: What’s The Difference?

Residential interior designers focus on creating living spaces for homeowners. This involves designing interior spaces in houses, townhomes, and apartments. For residential interior designers, the needs and comforts of the homeowners are their top priorities.

Commercial interior design is a little more involved. This is because you’re creating a more complex space for two groups of people — business owners and their customers or employees.

For example, let’s say you’re designing the interior space of a luxury hotel — a project much larger than a residential home. You need to take into consideration the hotel owners and their business objectives to maximize the building’s functionality and future profits. But at the same time, you also have to design a hotel that’s comfortable and welcoming for the guests.

The same goes for just about any commercial building interior design project — retail stores, restaurants, malls, theaters, hospitals, and many more.

What Does A Commercial Interior Designer Do?

So what exactly does a commercial interior designer do? Just decide which furniture, decorations, and paint colors to use?

Actually, commercial interior designing involves a lot more than that.

When most people hear “interior designers”, they think of “interior decorators”. Although similar, there are some differences in what they each do.

Interior decorators focus mainly on the aesthetic environment. Interior designers take aesthetics into account as well, but it’s just a small part of what they do.

Designers are interested in the overall functionality of the space. They have to figure out ways to create a space that is engaging, comfortable, and efficient, all while being visually appealing.

So as you can imagine, that’s not an easy task.

Let’s go back to the example of the luxury hotel. To maximize profits, a designer will figure out ways to accommodate a specific number of guests. But the hotel should also impress the guests. Fill the hotel’s available space with tiny rooms and limited amenities and guess what? Guests will not be happy.

It’s up to the commercial interior designer to figure out the best way to balance all of these factors. That’s why the designer needs to work closely with the client and the entire architectural team right from the start of the project.

Then as the project progresses, the designer continues to work with the architects, engineers, builders, and decorators. They collaborate when making important decisions about things like building safety codes, lighting, windows, ceiling design, commercial interior decor, and other architectural details.

By balancing all of these factors, talented commercial interior designers create spaces that directly contribute to a business’s long-term success.

Who Uses a Commercial Interior Designer?

You’ll often find commercial interior designers working as part of a larger architectural design firm. However, they may also work as independent consultants for building contractors or private clients.

Regardless of who they work for, commercial interior design professionals will collaborate with other housing professionals on a wide variety of projects. These could range from large projects like an airport to smaller ones like a small coffee shop.

On more extensive projects, the designer will usually work with a larger team of designers and architects — each focusing on their area of expertise. But on smaller commercial projects with just interior changes, the designer could likely end up taking the lead with the project and serving as the mediator between the client and the team doing the work.

Key Stages of the Commercial Interior Design Process

Let’s have a look at the 6 main stages of any commercial interior design project. These are important to understand and follow for your project to be a success.

Phase #1: Pre-design

At the beginning of any project, there’s a lot of information that designers need to gather. The pre-design phase kicks off this process.

They start by gathering information from their client and in some cases, even their client’s target customers. Here are a few topics designers should cover during initial discussions:

• What does the client want to achieve with their space?

• What do their customers or employees need from the space?

• How should the design of the space reflect the company’s overall branding image?

At this stage, many interior designers even start presenting initial design concepts to make sure everyone is on the same page.

IMPORTANT: Keep in mind that large projects in urban areas will involve a lot more research at this stage regarding things like budget analysis, zoning and code requirements, etc.

Phase #2: Programming

Once you understand your client’s needs, it’s time to move on to some of the hard planning. In the programming phase of commercial interior design, the designer works to nail down the client’s needs even further.

Designers need to define:

• The existing conditions of the commercial space

• The client’s current and future needs

• The space’s projected maintenance needs

• The total budget

• The desired completion date

A big part of the programming is establishing a budget and a timeframe for the project. Once designers know how much money and time they have to work with, they can move on to phase 3, the schematics.

Phase #3: Schematics

Based on the information the interior designer has gathered in the first two steps, they can now start to develop the 2D & 3D plans and layouts.

In the past, commercial interior designers relied heavily on mood boards and hand-drawn sketches. Modern design professionals use interior design and rendering software to plan and visualize layouts for their clients.

A great example of this software is Cedreo. With it, commercial designers can quickly create 2D floor plans, 3D floor plans, and photorealistic 3D renderings — complete with furnishings, textures, and lighting.

Check out an example of the commercial interior decor you can create in just a few hours with Cedreo.

Phase #4: Presentation

Now it’s time for the designer to review the plan with their client. For this stage, they must rely on more than just 2D plans. 3D layouts and renderings are essential for clearly transmitting your vision to clients.

More and more commercial designers are also relying on cloud-based interior design software like Cedreo since it lets them show their client design ideas without ever having to leave their office. Then, based on client feedback during the presentation, they tweak the designs and their clients instantly see the updated version on their computer.

Phase #5: Construction

While commercial interior designing doesn’t usually involve doing the construction or remodeling work, designers still work closely with contractors. In this way, they can ensure the project is completed according to the design specifications.

Phase #6: Post-construction

Once construction is finished, designers must walk through the space with their clients. They double-check everything was completed according to planned and that the client is happy with their new space.

If needed, they’ll create a punch list with any small items for the contractors to finish or change. Then they make sure that any changes get added to a set of as-built drawings for their client can keep on file.

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