Exterior and Interior environments are inevitably connected – thresholds to each other! Entrances and exits (not always in the same place) are the active connectors; windows are the passive.
An important part of your Interior design team’s challenge for your Interior design project, is making sure that your exterior environment supports and enhances your Interior design investment. Balance is achieved through several factors – visual appeal that coordinates; function that serves transitional compatibility; and compatible appointment.
On the large scale for coordination of Interior and Exterior design, your Interior design team may work closely with a professional landscape designer. Everything from exterior ground contouring to selective planting, ground cover choices, stone and rockwork and the positioning of trees and shrubs are carefully chosen. Consideration is given to scenic perspectives viewed from inside, as well as the enjoyment of them when outside.
Entrance design is where the first impressions of your personal or business environment are formed! Along with those first impressions, expectations are formed as well. Your Interior design team wants the transition areas to be smooth, balanced and compatible!
In light of our recent decades of gradual shifts in climate (which have brought seasonal unpredictability, increasingly severe weather contrasts and wide temperature swings) much of our enjoyment of our outside environments happens through our inside windows! Your Interior design team strives to connect the two in consideration of compatible expectations of actually being out there or only observing from inside! Colors and shapes are excellent possibilities for connection.
Passage from one environment aspect to another, particularly outside to inside, is an experience that has obvious impacts as well as subtle and subliminal impacts! A cluttered, muddy porch entry, an entry with too high steps, a commercial entry with no convenient ramp, a door that is so heavy it requires a Sumo wrestler to open it are all negative introduction impressions that are really not a good entré to your Interior design investment.
It is easy to see that Interior design does not stand alone! It can be compromised by poor attention to the entry and exit features, or greatly enhanced by entry and exit design that provides a strategic connection to the Interior!
When your Interior design project involves new construction, you and your Interior design team can take “first impressions” into consideration. For commercial projects, the company or practice logo, colors and graphics can help drive the entry design choices. And, once stepped inside, consider that immediate area as part of the entry. Is it a kind of vestibule, or is your visitor, client or customer immediately in the reception area or retail merchandise floor?
When your Interior design project is a remodel, refresh or refurbish challenge, it may take a bit of retro fitting! And keeping any re-do compatible with the exterior architecture as well as appropriate to the Interior design will definitely benefit from expert advice and guidance.
The situations vary, of course, but the consistent thing to remember is that your entrances and exits comprise the first and the last impressions of your Interior environments.
Remember also, that beauty and amenities at entrances and exits must enhance safety – not the reverse! Handrails, slip proof step coverings and reasonable weight doors all lend the visitor a friendly impression. And covered entry and a unit for wet umbrellas will shelter your visitor and help keep the wet outside!
And mean what you say on the welcome mat!
Robert Boccabella, B.F.A. is principal and founder of Business Design Services and a certified interior designer in private practice for over 30 years. Boccabella provides Designing to Fit the Vision© in collaboration with writingservice@earthlink.net. To contact him call 707-263-7073; email him at rb@BusinessDesignServices.com or visit www.BusinessDesignServices.com or on Face Book at Business Design Services.
