Just like humans, interiors too have personalities of their own. Depending on the colours used, articles placed, themes chosen, and designs created – interiors are provided with unique spatial personalities that make them stand out from the clutter. In this piece, we will focus on such personalities that flesh out while designing the interiors of commercial spaces.
When it comes to commercial interior designs, there are two approaches you can follow – maximalist and minimalist. There is a common misconception that commercial designs should always be designed keeping a minimalist approach in mind. People have this image of offices and other commercial buildings painted in neutral colours and simple furniture that they use as a reference when it comes to commercial designs.
However, that is not the case. Right from offices to restaurants, commercial designs are getting increasingly experimental. Depending on the identity and positioning of a brand, the interiors can sport minimalist as well as maximalist designs. Interior designers have become more open-minded and innovative in their approach, widening the scope of designing commercial spaces.
Choosing between maximalist and minimalist commercial designs is not too simple and involves taking multiple factors into consideration. Before discussing these factors, let us briefly understand the two approaches to design.
What are maximalist designs?
Maximalist designs are designs that are often termed as being ‘loud’ and ‘animated’. These designs are more ‘out there’ and extravagant in nature. They often end up using colours, materials, articles, and other resources in excess, often giving a vibrant and larger-than-life look to a place.
When it comes to commercial designs, maximalism primarily involves the use of bold colors. You may have seen funky restaurants sporting a combination of colours like black and red, navy blue and red, orange and purple, and more. Loud and prominent combinations like these often make it difficult for people to not notice the design of the interiors.
Maximalism also makes use of contrasting patterns and motifs to make the designs stand out and more noticeable. The use of disruptive patterns often draws a lot of attention and makes their presence felt in the room.
Maximalism is also about opulence and indulgence. Such designs often involve the use of repeated elements throughout the space. From installing similar articles at different places within a room or repeating images across the length of a wall, maximalism is all about flaunting excess in an aesthetic manner.
Maximalism involves making the most of the space available to you. Maximalist designs hardly leave any white spaces and aim at using them to the fullest. Designers often need to be creative in finding the right ways of using up white spaces to make them look appealing and serve the purpose.
A lot of maximalist designs often use layered images to give a more animated look to the space. Such an approach is especially followed by restaurants, hotels, and stores whose brands have loud and meta personalities. These layered images are often accompanied by dense texts and multiple fonts to draw more attention to the design and add to the overall vibe of the place.
Moreover, fantasy often plays a major role in maximalist designs. The use of fantastical elements in furniture and paints gives an exotic and out-of-the-box look to the concerned place. The primary intention of getting fantasy involved is to give an otherworldly look to the space and make the design memorable.
Maximalism often takes a lot of a designer’s creativity and knowledge of colours. As opposed to minimalist designs, maximalist designs tread the thin line between being aesthetic and off-putting. It is important for these designs to be practically perfect as even a small change can make the look of the space bizarre.
Fortunately, the new generation of commercial interior designers knows how to ace the maximalist look and give the right look to commercial spaces. If your brand allows you to go big and flaunt bold combinations, you can certainly go with maximalist designs.
What are minimalist designs?
Minimalist designs are the opposite of their maximalist counterparts. This approach to interior designing involves getting rid of excessive colours, furniture, furnishings, and other resources. Minimalist designs do not involve any use of loud and bold colours. They adopt a simple, subtle, and sober approach.
The primary purpose of minimalist design is to convey the personality of a brand without using anything more than what is absolutely necessary. However, this does not imply that such designs are dull and unappealing. Minimalism involves making the most of the bare minimum and using less to convey more. It is all about how beautiful and elegant you can make a place look without being too extravagant and animated about it.
A lot of minimalism is about making the right use of space. While maximalist designs stuff spaces with articles and furnishings, minimalist designs involve limited but tasteful use of resources to add to the aesthetic appeal of a space. In the case of commercial designs, minimalism is used very often to give a subdued, calm, and professional look to workspaces, stores, and restaurants whose brands do not require being loud and ‘out there’ in terms of their designs.
Minimalist designs often involve using neutral colours in combination with simpler colours, such as using white with light blue, sea green, light brown, and more. These designs are calming to the eye and do not demand a lot of attention toward them. As opposed to maximalist designs, minimalist designs do not shy away from white spaces. Instead, they use white spaces in innovative ways to improve the look of the space.
Minimalism works on the idea of ‘less is more’. It thrives on using limited resources to enhance the appeal of the concerned space. Instead of taking away from the spatial beauty of a place by using only what is needed, minimalistic designs add to it by following a restrained approach.
Just like maximalism, minimalism is more than an approach to interior design. It is the reflection of an entrepreneur and/or a brand’s personality and an individual’s state of mind in a spatial manner. It reflects the philosophy of focusing only on what is the most important in life and making the most out of the same.
If you are willing to keep the look of your commercial interiors understated and subdued without compromising its aesthetics, you can opt for a minimalistic interior design.
Maximalist v/s Minimalist designs: Which approach is better?
There is no objective answer to this question. Both maximalist and minimalist designs have their own pros and cons. The design approach you choose for your commercial interiors depends on a range of different factors. The interior design of the headquarters of an IT company cannot be the same as the interior design of a new hip club in town. At the end of the day, it all depends on which approach best suits your case.
Here are some important factors that play an important role in choosing the kind of design to be used for commercial interiors:
Brand personality
The personality of your brand dictates the kind of interiors your commercial spaces would sport to a great extent. If your brand is positioned as a funky, quirky, and loud venture in the industry, you can go for a maximalist design for your interiors. On the other hand, if your brand is positioned as a simple, elegant, and no-nonsense venture, you can have your interiors designed with a minimalist approach.
Your target audience
Just like marketing, a lot of commercial interior designing depends on the customers or clients you are targeting. If you run an insurance company targeting HNIs and clients with whom you share a highly professional relationship, it is advisable to follow a minimalist approach to interior design.
On the other hand, if you have been targeting the Gen-Z and millennial audience having a bolder and more adventurous attitude, you can go out of your way and implement a maximalist design for your interiors.
The atmosphere to be built
Interior designing is all about making people enter into a new world as they walk into your property. If you want people to enter into a world that is exotic, opulent, indulgent, shiny, and loud on purpose, you can have a maximalist approach to commercial interior design.
On the other hand, if you want people to enter into a world where the atmosphere is calmer and more restrained, you should incorporate minimalistic designs for your interiors.
The final word
Whichever side of the fence you are on, the aim of commercial interior designs has always been to build a world that is coherent with what the concerned brand stands for. As long as you are true to your organization and what it stands for, it doesn’t matter the design approach you opt for. However, once you have made your choice, make sure that you optimize the look of your interiors to add to the aesthetics while sticking to the core of your business.