Showroom design – tips for small spaces

Concepts for showrooms

Identifying the optimal interior design concept for your own showroom is one of the first and most important tasks in the planning phase. Often the newly emerging showroom has to be integrated into a preexisting environment and long-established premises. In cases like these it’s all about making maximum use of the room’s advantages and covering up its possible weaknesses as good as possible.

Accessibility and visitor guidance

• entrances and exits: well-conceived guidance and directions for groups to and from the showroom (including barrier-free access of coat-check and restrooms)
• clever showroom integration/separation (g., in case of parallel regular business operation going on in the same building, with respect to soundproofing, etc.)
• hygiene, security, and safety, for instance concerning access control, visitor documentation, and fire protection

Designing a small room as a showroom

spoiler alert: even a small venue can house a groundbreaking performance.

A small room with only one entrance/exit usually predetermines visitors’ movement and the routes they can take. But what at first sight seems like a disadvantage can actually be turned to work in favor of the room’s dramaturgical presentation, for instance by using it to create a veritable pull-effect, e.g., by means of

• transparency: glass fronts afford either full or partial view into the room’s interior.
• ambience: atmospheric tension can be created by using sensor-controlled lighting our sound effects.
• innovation tidbits served piecemeal with an enticing LED monitor wall that shines forth from one end of the room and invites closer inspection.

The smaller the room, the more challenging it is to accommodate and reconcile within it all the necessary functionalities of a showroom. After all, you wouldn’t want your room to look cluttered or crammed. To master this challenge successfully, you can basically choose between two strategic options: either condense the storytelling message to one or few quintessentials or use versatile digital installations.

Typically, the room’s access and lay-out automatically leads the visitor to a position somewhere in its center, which is why using the surrounding walls as a screen for the presentation of content is only logical. The room’s separate interactive elements (e.g. the monitor wall or individual displays) as well can be controlled from the center of the room, for instance from a multi-touch table or from a swiveling interactive station serving as the showroom’s central control unit. And if in a presentation you just magic digital content from the table and onto the wall with a swipe, wouldn’t that just be the epitome of ‘cool’ …?

Exemplary design of a small interactive presentation room:

Tip – Immersing in an alternate reality just doesn’t work if the world I’m entering looks exactly like the one I just left.

A showroom must never ever evoke in its visitors the association with a converted office space (even if that actually is the case). Fast and easy in implementation and effective: covered or blinded windows (e.g., w/ drywall), distinctive wall and floor texture and special lighting concept

Real-life Example: Interactive Showroom of Lingemann GmbH

One wall of this rectangular room consists entirely of a glass front with a built-in door. On its only 55 m² all exhibits and interactive stations are networked and interconnected: one multi‑touch table, a 6 x 55’’ monitor wall, interactive LED lighting, surround sound system, and numerous IoT elements (products). The showroom narrates the corporate history and explains the products’ integrated functionality in a straightforward and vivid way. More info

This blog entry is an excerpt from our comprehensive whitepaper “Successful Planning and Realization of Corporate Showrooms – A guide from HOW to WOW”. If you would like to receive the whitepaper free of charge, please write an email with the subject “Whitepaper Showroom” to info@garamantis.com.