There is a saying, "Ambiance can affect everything from perceptions to responsiveness and reliability.”
This adage holds true when it comes to café interior design too. Gone are the days where the quality of beverage was the only criteria for visiting customers. Today being the age of Instagram and Facebook, people go to a café not just for a refreshing coffee but also for an overall great experience. So coffee isn't the only factor that guarantees success to a café.
Cafés today are considered as the new social hub spots where people have a relaxed time and socialise. No wonder café interior design plays a vital role in its popularity.
Uniquely designing your café so that it stands out among the crowd is the key. Café interior design incorporates all aspects like the ambience, lighting, and décor, and all these aspects play an important role in making a long-lasting impression in the customer's mind.
Hence, café owners go out all the way to make their interiors absolutely stunning to cater to the millennial population (and the old alike).
Café Interior Design and Psychology:
The psychology and mindset of a person visiting a café are much different from a person visiting a restaurant. One has to target that psychology and bring it inside one's café interior design.
To help you design your café, we give below some tips about café interior design and things you need to know before designing your dream café. Let's get started.
6 Spot-On Tips for a Good Café Interior Design:
There are umpteen ways in which one can go about making one's café genuinely innovative. For instance, one can derive inspiration from western pop culture, have books and games to cater to a broad audience of different age groups, play with colours, or bring in more artefacts to make the place more quirky and Instagram-worthy.
#1. Plan your design Based on your Target Audience:
If your café is next to a college or your primary target is college goers, then the café interior design should be more youthful and have bright colours and interesting music.
If your target audience is working professionals or writers, build a quiet place with suitable space for placing laptops, comfortable, and spaced-out seating to ensure privacy and the like. Also, one must provide adequate charging stations for individuals to charge their laptops or mobiles while sipping a hot cup of coffee. The wall colours for such a clientele must be subtle and classy.
2. Takeaway vs Relaxed Dining-in Experience or Both
If one provides minimal and simple seating with bold, flashy paints on the wall, it will make the customers stopover for a quick cuppa or opt for a takeaway and go.
On the other hand, if you opt for more relaxed and comfortable seating, choose solid wooden chairs with plush cushions and comfortable tables where one can work efficiently or large sofas (where one can curl up with a good book over a cup of coffee). Additionally, things like relaxing music, pastel hues on the wall, and so on, will entice the customers, and they would be willing to spend hours together at the café. Most coffee houses opt for the second type of relaxed environment.
If you want a combination of relaxed interiors and outdoor seating for those who want to grab a quick bite, you have to design accordingly. For instance, in outdoor seating, one must decide how the seating can be made comfortable during hotter or colder seasons.
3. Pick up the Right Colour Scheme:
The colour palette that you use on the interior and the exterior greatly impact the customers who come into your café. If you want to make your outlet cheerful and bright, use bright hues like orange and yellow. Certain shades of red and yellow are also considered diet stimulants as they create a sort of trigger in the customers' minds.
On the other hand, if you want a warm and soothing look to your café, opt for a palette of white/neutral combined with darker tones.
4. Choose the Correct form of Lighting:
No matter how well you design your café interior, choosing the wrong lighting can ruin your entire effort. Proper lighting gives a lovely ambience to the place, and it should be in sync with the core theme of your café and highlight your brand image.
Also, allow for plenty of natural light to flow in during the daytime. Having lots of large windows and glass doors in your interior design will allow an influx of natural light. If you feel they might pave the way for more heat, you can add some heat control films or soft curtains to prevent heat during hot summers. More natural light makes the customers more energised to spend more hours in your café (and lower electricity bills too !!!)
During the evenings after the sun sets in, it is vital to have a cosy and laid back atmosphere with low-intensity warm lighting. Opt for more wall lights and fewer ceiling lights.
You can place some high-intensity lights in areas like pastry corners, sugar stations, and the like. The idea is to give customers an intimate and calm environment to relax after the day’s work, but at the same time, it should not be so dark or gloomy that they cannot read the menu card.
5. Acoustics:
Sound directly connects to one's emotions, and hence acoustics play an important role in a café's interior design. Cafés are places where people come in to socialise or work in private, and thus loud music is best avoided. Opt for music good enough to fill in the silence but at the same time will allow for free conversation.
6. The Layout and Privacy Factor:
Ensure the place does not feel overcrowded. Take into account the seating arrangements, placing of tables (space between two tables), the ordering and pick-up queue spacing, and so on. For instance, make the seating arrangements more spaced out to bring in more privacy.
A café attracts different types of crowds: some like to interact loudly while others might prefer a private corner. There should be a balance in the layout to cater to both groups.
We hope you enjoyed reading the above tips. Our expert designers have more personalised ideas and suggestions that can make your café a popular food and enjoyment destination.
Hipcouch offers end-to-end designer services as well as customised design-only services with handpicked qualified interior designers. Contact us to know more.