Having an Industrial theme for a café or shop is more than leaving walls unpainted, ceilings or the floors bare and adding a few shabby furniture pieces.
There’s an art to making it all come together well.
Here are 5 designer’s tips to help create an Industrial look fitout.
1. Gather Ideas:
After you’ve got a good idea of the features of your retail or café space, gather a list of basic finishes to get started:
They’ll need to be something like this:
Aged timber, rich and warm in colour
Metal
Raw concrete
Brick roughly laid or with wide, untidy grout lines
Aged, rusty or blackened surfaces
Contrasting dark colours or surfaces against whites or light greys. Something like our collection above. These will help as a reference point.
2. Simplicity:
The number one rule.
Don’t have too much going on. Design overload is a trap of this style.
Follow the motto “Less is more”. Clutter isn’t appealing so select key elements of the space you’re in and work with them.
Usually, they’re things people want to hide!
Features like high ceilings with lots of pipes or exposed ducting, aged, gnarled timber beams, or fantastic old curved windows.
If you’re lucky enough to have any of these, make them your starting point and build from there with simplicity in mind.
3. Rawness:
This often means leaving things bare, or basically as they are, while taking away any dirty, grungy element.
The rawness doesn’t mean shabby or grubby.
It has its own beauty and simplicity a sort of purity about it.
So, leaving the concrete floor as it is, with hopefully some cracks and laughter lines is a great idea.
It will need to be sealed for hygiene purposes but will appear raw and uncomplicated.
An unpainted or partly painted wall can be another element to work with. Clean it up, and leave it unfinished!.
Expose the pipework either running down the walls or up in the ceiling. Not necessarily all of it – remember don’t overload the senses.
Make a judgement about how much needs to be exposed.
4. Create Contrast:
Use whites or light greys to paint on the walls to contrast with elements like aged timber posts or beams, exposed brickwork, blackened pipework, or rusting metal columns.
Such a scheme has so much impact.
Keep some warm, earthy tones alongside the whites and greys.
Usually keeping the warm worn timber and old brickwork will do the trick.
5. Combine the materials in the choice of furniture:
Metal and timber are most probably the key materials here.
You should be able to source a variety of industrial-style furnishings easily these days from genuine vintage, to new items inspired by old factory and laboratory usage.
Light fittings are important too. Exposed bulbs on chords are everywhere now, so be inventive and create your ideas for fittings from industrial pipes, pieces of tin or iron.
Repurpose..the sky’s the limit.
Consult an electrician with your ideas.
The industrial past re-interpreted can be easy to achieve. Keep focused on these pointers, use materials that are linked to the past and keep it simple. It can be heaps of fun!
To get the best industrial look from your retail fitout, contact the gold coast retail fitters now!
