aka ..Why we feel entitled to give gyan about Salon Design (part two)

Following are few simple guidelines that we advise our clients 

1 – Its always best to decide on your Interior designer/Architect before signing up the finalized site. This is because they can validate and do a CAD mock fitout plan for you, so that you are sure that the space that you are going to sign up for 4-5 years is going to fit all the beauty services that you are planning on. Running virtual Space optimisation scenarios is very important in high rental spaces, especially the metros. Here, as side note, I have to put that if you believe in Vastu Shastra this is also a good time to bring your Vastu consultant in so that both him/her and the  Architect agree on the viability of the site.

2 – Get all the MEP services related parameters checked.  a. Electrical load availability & requirements, b. plumbing inlets outlets and water supply availability, c. HVAC location and optimisation.

3 – Whether you are choosing a site in a mall or high street getting a good façade for hair styling section always helps. So if you have to choose between a space with good façade on the first floor vs one with a narrow frontage on the ground floor go for the former. And plan the action oriented stuff near the façade.

4- If you are happy with the location, don’t hesitate because of the site condition, but look for its potential. A good interior designer should be able to use the existing site conditions or restrictions for their advantage. We have had site which had 3’x3’ column bang in the middle of it and we used it as a design feature. 

Have a look at this example of using existing site features to your advantage and creating design elements from them.

We got this site, with an existing coffered ceiling that did not have much floor to ceiling height. So, we used each coffer as a light box with stretch ceiling. By doing this we achieved two things a. less reduction in floor to ceiling height and 2. Great ambience through these uniquely shaped light boxes. This project was finished in 2010 so any similarities with Zaha Hadid’s London olympics swimming pool is purely coincidental. (I am not kidding go ahead check it up).