4 Design Trends in Commercial Buildings

Designing a commercial building is really about the effect you want the building to have on your employees. The type of décor that might have your staff clutching their red stapler in a panic is out, and warmer, more open, more casual designs are coming in. Take a look at the latest design trends in commercial buildings for some tips.

Smart tech

Smart tech was initially posited as gadgets that would help out at home because there’s money in that and a lot of change that smart tech can affect, but behind the scenes, smart tech is taking over the workplace. It’s taking over entire cities, in fact. Smart tech is more than a few cool gadgets that can play music. Cities are installing smart lamp lights that emit Wi-Fi and take in citizen data, and smart apartments are being built with Alexa or Siri wired into the walls and motion detection lighting installed all over.

Meanwhile, smart tech has been looking after commercial buildings for years. Fobs are commonplace nowadays, but today they can come in the form of a chip and be programmed to allow and block access to certain areas, for staff and customers visiting an exclusive spa room for example, can be added to nametags, and can even hold onto password details so your staff can use it to login in the morning.

Additionally, concepts like automatic window openers and motion-detected lighting are helping conserve energy in office spaces.

Break out areas

Let’s face it, office spaces are nowhere anyone wants to be now that they know that working from home is a viable option. Therefore, a lot of office managers are having to sweeten the deal to get people back in the office. Additionally, office managers are seeing that hybrid working and hot desking have resulted in them having too much space to use up. So, a lot of them are installing break-out areas.

These are areas dedicated to simply taking a break. In a lot of hotter areas of the world, they can be roof or balcony terraces, but for the most part,they're using office space to allow staff members to take a break and engage with other staff members in a more casual setting, offering staff a safe space. These areas tend to follow more trends that are popping up in office spaces in general, namely warmer tones, more natural materials and plants to make everything a little more homey.

Noise reduction

A lot of offices are also doing away with the segregated desk format. Not only does it feel like your own personal prison, complete with the family photos stuck to it to “keep you going”, but thanks to Covid it became an issue. Offices were redesigned to allow for social distancing and the grey boxy panels separating staff were done away with.

However, this has come with its own side effect that is becoming an issue. Noise is now travelling easier and farther across the office, which is particularly an issue when everyone is hosting Zoom meetings from their desk. Commercial designers are not looking into noise reduction solutions like padding on walls to solve this problem.