The idea of interior design often conjures images of redoing a kitchen or a spare bedroom in someone’s home. Whether you realize it or not, the practice of well-planned interior design in any business, like a self-storage facility, serves a much bigger function than just colors and patterns.
Interior design and finishing affect and influence functionality, comfort, effective use of space, safety, branding, and much more—on top of aesthetics. With all of that in mind, it can be easy to go over an interior finish budget in a construction project.
Storage Construction works with its clients to prevent that type of budget “overrun” by keeping the builders and the budget in mind during the design process. We refer to this as value engineering, a creative, organized, collaborative effort that analyzes the requirements of a project to achieve the essential functions at the lowest total costs over the life of the project.
In this article, I’ll focus on a few suggestions that my team offers building owners when it comes to aesthetic-, function-, and budget-minded decisions in the area of interior finishes.
There’s no need to build an office (including a desk, retail area, breakroom, and bathroom) larger than 30-by-30 (or 900 square feet). This part of your facility should be comfortable, bright, and clean, but at its heart it should be all about functionality and straightforward business interaction.
To that end, there’s no need to overdesign or overspend on office treatments and finishes. Here are just a few things to consider for the design of an office:
Here are four ways to remain focused on simplicity.
Keep hallway ceilings exposed.
Open ceilings can give the sense of a more spacious facility, but they also cut down on costs. Installing a ceiling finish such as ceiling panels, soffit ceilings, or drop ceilings is expensive and can add time and complications to mechanical runs like HVAC ducting, sprinkler piping, lighting, and others.
Stick with concrete flooring.
There is no need for carpeting or epoxy floor finishes in self-storage hallways. These hallways will see a lot of traffic and wear. Leaving the concrete exposed, perhaps with a sealant, will save costs down the road by eliminating or reducing the need to replace worn materials.
Keep it bright.
When choosing colors, we always suggest choosing bright white colors for the hallways. Even though some other colors aren’t an upcharge, many are an added expense. More importantly, bright white interior colors will brighten the overall structure for customers without the need for the installation of additional lighting.
Keep the lighting simple.
For the interior hallway lighting, we recommend an 8-foot LED strip light with a built-in motion detector. Anything beyond this will expand your budget for both parts and installation, and built-in motion detectors can offer an additional reduction in costs for wiring and installation labor.
These are just a handful of specific examples of our much more comprehensive process. Knowing how to balance form and function in the project design stage can be invaluable when it comes to the actual process of constructing a facility —and invaluable to your bottom line.
–
Matt DePrato is the vice president of preconstruction and development at York, Pa.-based Storage Construction. He has worked in the self-storage industry for nearly 20 year, and has overseen the operations of Storage Construction’s affiliate company, Automated Security, a national security integration company for the self-storage industry.