Branding doesn’t end when the logo has been finalised or when the website has gone live. Recently more business owners have begun to elevate their brand, by making the link between brand identity and their physical space. Whether a business operates from a single site or multiple locations across the country, when it comes to interior branding consistency is key.
What is interior branding?
Why branding is important in interior design
Corporate identity in office interiors
Visual branding in retail interiors
Visual branding in hospitality interiors
Design elements to consider
Interior branding is the most overlooked aspect of forming a clear and consistent company brand. It’s an opportunity to treat your physical space as a palette and apply the same rules as you would for all other aspects of marketing. It’s about more than just a logo or a sign, all elements must work together to form an on-brand, engaging and sensory experience. By carefully considering how your brand could be communicated through the layout, finishing materials, colour, and lighting in your interiors you can achieve that final link in the identity chain.
These design choices will ultimately impact the impression you make on clients, customers, and staff and send a message about who you are as a company. Striking that balance between company imagery, design aesthetics, and functionality can make a huge difference.
Bringing your interiors in line with your branding can be extremely beneficial in reinforcing your culture and ethos. Interior design is an opportunity to adhere to your own company principles. For example, if you focus on eco-friendly products you can reflect this in your interior by using recycled or reclaimed materials and environmentally friendly lighting. This strengthens your brand and will attract fresh talent who share your goals.
Consistency is the crucial element that binds your identity together. When all of your other marketing materials are coherent the last thing you want is for your interior to contradict the message you wish to portray. A beige interior filled with generic furniture that shows no attempt at creating an engaging space will lead people to assume that you have put just as little thought into the products or services that you offer.
A key question to consider is “Does the look and feel of the interior evoke that of the brand?” – it must support and complement the corporate style.
Interior branding is a worthwhile investment, adding value to your brand and presenting you with the chance to stand out from the crowd and demonstrate what makes you unique.
A corporate visual identity consists of five main components; corporate name, logo, font, colour palette, and slogan/tagline. However, the role of interior design is becoming more established, as clients/customers are not always confronted with these ‘main’ components first. Entering the office space may well be the first chance they have had to form an impression of the company.
So the crucial question is; what do you want visitors to feel when they step through the door? You need to create a professional, consistent image that ties in with both your corporate identity and your culture. But office design has come a long way since the days of grey cubicles. It is now being recognised as a place to experiment with various engaging architectural and design elements in order to stand out and improve employee productivity and morale.
Consider not only the visitor experience but the well-being of staff and the impact the interior will have on their day-to-day working life. Research carried out by the Design Council shows that the workplace environment accounts for as much as 25% of job satisfaction, and can affect performance by as much as 5% for individuals and 11% for teams.
Reminding employees of the company’s goals and presenting a consistent message across the board can reinforce the reasons why they were drawn to working there in the first place. As a result, it will also encourage them to support and achieve corporate objectives.
When it comes to a retail company with multiple locations, rather than a single site, consistency becomes even more crucial. This ensures that your brand is instantly recognisable no matter where your customers are. Look at Apple for instance, who have designed both their headquarters and every one of their stores to reflect their focus on technological advancement and innovation. The aesthetic of these Apple stores is not only consistent with the image they aim to portray but also their products and packaging.
Consider how you can use the interior design to form an experience that is both engaging and relevant to what you’re selling. If you were selling outdoor clothing and equipment, for example, it would be confusing for shoppers to be in a cosy or luxurious setting. Natural colours, materials, and imagery, however, would allow people to see themselves using and enjoying the products. You should be able to use the same descriptive words to describe the physical space as the ones you would choose to describe the products themselves.
Injecting personality and making a visit to your store memorable means customers will come to associate the products with the quality of the interior design.
Similarly to retail, hotels, and restaurants with multiple locations can also benefit hugely from achieving brand consistency across all venues. There is a real opportunity to create a unique customer experience with hospitality interiors and the design will have an overwhelming impact on whether visitors return or choose to visit one of the other branches. Use branding to differentiate your business from the competition, if it is recognisable across several locations the public will come to associate the quality and consistency of the interior branding with the quality of your food or service.
For restaurants in particular, it’s likely that the branding and colour scheme of the sign/logo has been specifically designed to reflect the kind of cuisine on offer. This should be no different when designing the interiors. Whether it’s fresh and healthy, rich and indulgent, American or Thai, give customers an experience that’s memorable and relevant to your brand and they are more likely to visit again.
The walls and ceiling of your interior represent an opportunity to showcase your brand and apply the points raised throughout this article. You can experiment with materials, textures, and colour to create a truly unique and memorable feature. From slatted panel systems incorporating natural wood to the industrial feel of brick or concrete the options are endless and they don’t have to break the bank or take an age to install. All of the Vtec decorative wall and ceiling solutions have been designed to fit within any interior seamlessly and without fuss.
We are passionate about creating a design that is unique to your company. You have the option to combine exciting textures with your company colours.
It’s important to consider how the design choices can impact the experience you want to give your visitors. That’s exactly what we did for this Spanish tapas restaurant, recreating the look and feel of a Spanish wine vault by tailoring the London Brick Multi system to the curved ceiling. The result is a space that transports the diner to another place entirely, reflecting the origin of the cuisine and forming a relaxing yet sophisticated atmosphere.
Need more guidance on how to incorporate branding into your interiors? Get in touch with the Vtec team today, call 03307 00 00 30 or email info@vtecgroup.co.uk
