Month: November 2021

What Makes a Good Restaurant Layout? Consider These Suggestions In 2022

Space Plus Blog

Post-COVID, restaurant spaces across the nation are rethinking their design. They may be downsizing to work better for to-go and takeaway while still offering seated dining. Square footage still comes at a hefty premium, especially if a business is in a highly desirable area. In restaurants with small floor plans, it is possible to maximize seating capacity while keeping the space comfortable and inviting — with the right strategy.

There are simple and affordable ways to create the illusion of a roomier space and help patrons feel comfortable. From installing glass partitions to using light to your advantage, follow these interior design tips to make your restaurant feel welcoming and spacious.

1. Add well-placed mirrors

Large mirrors instantly give a room more depth. They also reflect artificial and natural light to make a room brighter, during both day and night. Here are some tried-and-tested tips for using mirrors:

Angle a mirror toward a focal point to give the illusion of depth in the space.
Hang a variety of mirrors next to each other on a single wall; they’ll reflect light, add depth to the space, and create an eclectic focal point.
Place a large mirror near a window to reflect the outside. This creates an especially nice look if there are trees or greenery outside your building.
Use glass or mirrored tabletops to reflect light and make the space feel more expansive.

2. Partition the space with style

Use glass room partitions to create distinct seating areas to help patrons host private events and feel safe, without sacrificing light or interior aesthetics. Glass privacy walls with opaque, clear or linen glass add privacy and can even help absorb sound for improved acoustics. Movable glass partitions are a great way to separate communal eating areas from booths and tables—and they’re versatile. Use them to reconfigure sections of the space as needed.

3. Use natural and artificial light to your advantage

Natural lighting is always the first thing to look for when trying to create mood-boosting environments. If it’s in the budget (and structurally possible), expanding windows to let more natural light in will instantly make your interior look larger. If windows are small or sparse and installing larger ones isn’t possible, you still have options.

Use multiple light sources to open up the space. Recessed lighting and pendant lights are worthy investments. If a lighting renovation isn’t in the budget, floor lamps, sideboard lamps, and even tabletop lamps or candles are effective ways to spread light. Switching out drywall or wooden doors for clear glass partitions may also help the flow of light in your space.

4. Utilize vertical space

If your space has high or higher-than-average ceilings, you can use vertical space to your advantage. Make the most of vertical space by hanging long pendant lamps from the ceiling, which will naturally draw the eye up. Use tall rows of vertical shelving to draw attention upward and away from the floor space. Turn an empty corner into a gallery wall for art or photography.

Space Plus: Helping Restaurants Improve Customer Experience

Space Plus, a division of The Sliding Door Company, builds and installs custom glass room dividers, privacy walls, barn doors, swing doors and other indoor solutions to help enhance the customer experience at restaurants, cafes, bars and hotels.

Our glass indoor walls and doors lend themselves to a free-flowing design and create a sense of spacious elegance. Our experts will help you customize your own interior glass partitions, moveable dividers, or privacy walls to fit the design needs of your establishment.

View our gallery for inspiration and learn more about our room dividers and sliding glass door solutions here.

Bringing Remote Workers Back to the Office

Space Plus Blog

Our life since the pandemic began has evolved dramatically. For some employees, making space on a cluttered kitchen counter for kids to participate in their remote learning (while pets are running around and barking) was a less than ideal solution. If you sent your staff home to quarantine during the peak of COVID, but are now ready to get them back into the office, there are some best practices emerging on how to get workers excited to return to work.

Overhaul the Office

Yes, really. Your office may be long overdue for an overhaul. Better furniture, lighting, and a space that offers true comfort and productivity can beat a cubicle in the corner of a dark room (or a cluttered kitchen) any day. While you might have gotten away with less in the past, now is the time to rethink the setup of the space you offer to your workers. If you can add plants, windows, break down barriers and let people thrive, they will enjoy coming back in. Offering new and creative solutions to offices, like QUBIGLASS®, can lighten the mood, and bring the spirit of collaboration back into your space.

Perk Up

Gyms are back! Snack bars! All the things we might have taken for granted in the past are real treasures now. Are you offering unlimited coffee, the occasional social event or maybe happy hour? The little things are big again and will be appreciated by those who enjoy spending time with their peers and coworkers. On a tight budget, you might just improve parking or childcare, popcorn breaks and anything that can beat the ‘covid-fatigue’ for those tired of being at home.

Think Hybrid

Chances are not everyone will be thrilled if you make the office 100% mandatory 100% of the time. Think flexibly and ease everyone in. Maybe every other day is a work-from-home day, or maybe you can let certain departments stagger time to skip rush hour. Rotate staff members’ schedules so there is still a safe environment as opposed to max capacity. We’ve seen many businesses let remote work become an incentive or earnable reward for great work.

Stop, Collaborate and Listen

Not just pop song lyrics, but smart business advice. Asking your employees how they envision their future with your business could surprise you. Try anonymous surveys to ease the pressure and hear more honest feedback. If you’re open and receptive, your employees will tell you what they truly want. We are seeing many offices add large meeting rooms. You may want to add bigger and safely spaced conference spaces, places where teams that missed collaborating can work on the big picture and have group meetings.

Many major companies feel they have delayed their return to work long enough, and more and more businesses are eager to get the gang back together again. By thinking through the logistics and maybe making some key improvements, you will get your team excited about seeing each other again with vaccinated high fives all over the office.

If you need to reimagine, refresh and make key upgrades to improve your space, reach out to Space Plus now.

Office Environments, Layouts, Standards and Guidelines

Space Plus Blog

office divider for conference room with unique glass panels

As a contractor or architect, it’s up to you to design a space for your clients that is well suited to the client’s needs and improves the quality of their experience existing in the space. Getting contracted to design office spaces is not always easy, especially today with a rapidly evolving definition of what an office environment could be. Nowadays, most new offices are multidimensional and act as a home away from home- with kitchens, games, and lounge areas that simulate the essence of a living room.

These workspaces are meant to cater to the worker’s needs, boost morale, enhance production, and increase continuity and communication amongst coworkers or “team members”. By designing a thoughtful and considered layout, and installing the right framework, you’ll be able to craft an innovative working environment that your client and their employees will love. Below, we’ve outlined some things to keep in mind during the design process. Much needed rooms, spatial separation, and exciting elements to employ may help inspire your blueprints.

Office Open Floor Plans

Today, open floor plans have become the new staple or standard in office design. More and more companies are recognizing that allowing their employees to freely communicate, work together and experience closeness actually increases productivity and team morale. Open floor plans also increase visibility, natural light, and breathability throughout the office environment. By starting off your design with an open plan, you make room for a lot of inventive spatial solutions and targeted rooms that will add intrigue and excitement to the space.

Office Phone Booths/Call Rooms

A good way to allow for some spatial separation and privacy is to introduce phone booths or “tiny rooms” into the open swath of expansive office space. While these glass barriers are not specifically soundproof, they do provide a spatial barrier that lessens noise and provides increased privacy. This way, when a team member has a long call (or a loud voice) they can quickly step into these quiet spaces and not feel guilty about distracting nearby workers. A new poll by Udemy and Toluna showed that 80% of workers admit to being sonically distracted while at work.

“Office noise is the second most cited workplace disturbance, with seven out of ten respondents citing noise as a top bother in their day-to-day workflow” (statista.com).

Outside influences on employees’ working environment take a toll on productivity and cause employees a cumbersome mental reset every few minutes. A great solution to introduce with these call booths is to install sliding door room dividers for the call booth so as to save space in an already tiny enclosure, while creating a stylish design that increases the office aesthetic. Our solutions divide the space, curtail foot traffic and provide visual privacy.

Bonus Yoga / Stretching / Meditation Room

A new trend amongst trendy office spaces is offering a yoga or meditation room. People become seriously fatigued while sitting for too long a time in uncomfortable office chairs day in and day out. Not only is a desk job physically grueling on a person’s body, but it also takes a mental toll. By designing workers space for some healthy breaks to stretch, breathe, recenter and improve their physical health, you effectively boost productivity, increase mental capacity and increase contentment amongst a workforce. Consider installing sliding glass barn doors for this room – it will enhance the overall look of the room and offer an artistic flourish your client will love. What’s more, you can choose from six different glass opacities to best suit your client’s needs. For the yoga room, perhaps a more opaque glass finish would be the ideal choice, so workers can stretch and meditate while enjoying a bit of privacy.

Think Tank / Conference Room

While open floor plans are a great way to achieve integration, cohesion, and an overall team mentality, any office environment should come equipped with a full-size conference room for important/private meetings and presentations. Some like to think of these rooms as productive think tanks. Not providing one would be a big detriment to any business. People need to be able to gather around a table, bounce ideas off each other, check-in on progress, etc. To engineer a stylistic balance of privacy with visibility, use glass sliding door room dividers to integrate a conference room amongst the rest of the open floor plan. This way, you’ll provide a “separate yet together” feel that your clients will thoroughly enjoy.

Private Offices

Of course, you’ll want to design your office space with at least one to three private offices to provide distinction for the company CEO, manager or owner from the general workforce. By using floor-to-ceiling glass wall partitions and interior sliding doors, you’ll provide enough spatial separation and privacy while assimilating the rooms into the vast open space. An office with four solid walls on each side doesn’t exactly say “teamwork” the way it should. Rather, it segregates the people below and can make employees feel detached from their bosses or those higher up than them. As the designer, take it upon yourself to create a positive, integrative working environment that will improve the working conditions of employees and drive the business in the right direction.

Our glass and aluminum partitions are recyclable and perfect for green construction projects. They also assist architects with earning LEED points which is another selling point when contracting clients. Taking into consideration general layout, office partitions, the use of glass, and introducing inventive spaces, you’ll successfully craft a product that your clients will celebrate each day they come into work. An office should be a productive home away from home. Consult the experts in space optimization and check out Space Plus, a division of the Sliding Door Company.

Have a look at our products gallery for inspiration and product images. Schedule a call with one of our knowledgeable professionals to get a free quote and other information on our many available solutions. Simply find a location near you and ensure your office design a success!

How Office Spaces Can Promote Productivity

Space Plus Blog

Your employees’ overall confidence, contentment, mindset and general outlook are critical to the success of your company. A working environment that inspires positivity can go a long way in helping your employees return to work, especially if they have been remote for a long period of time. There are many ways an office space can boost employee morale. Here are a few things to consider:

By Encouraging Collaboration and Communication

Remember the dark, isolating cubicles that were popular in the past? Today’s offices have gone in the complete opposite direction, as they are all about culture and interaction. Rows of desks can be designed to face one another and encourage communication during the workday. The issue with open office floor plans, however, is a lack of privacy and quiet areas to focus.

Want to find a happy medium? Consider office cubicles crafted with glass, which allows for division without isolation. As well as encouraging communication with coworkers when doors are open, this solution will also result in increased productivity due to employees’ ability to slide the glass doors closed when it’s time to focus. You will no doubt see more efficient problem-solving and improved mood among your workforce.

By Being a Place to Celebrate

Morale is high in an office that genuinely treats its employees like family. Create a space where special occasions can be celebrated! Honoring birthdays, anniversaries and employee accomplishments are all ways to make employees feel special and valued.

A separate space for these celebrations is ideal, as it will ensure other departments are undisturbed during work hours. However, this doesn’t mean you have to close it off with solid walls; instead, consider letting the natural light flow through with interior glass partitions which allow for separation but also the opportunity for people to see the happiness of their coworkers, which can be contagious.

By Providing Room for Respect

In addition to doing all of the things that bring employees together, a balance must be struck between this and giving them privacy. A space where employees can make private calls, enjoy a peaceful break or lunch, or have a few moments of quiet during times of grief can make all the difference to how they feel about their employer. Space Plus provides many glass door options for phone-booth, privacy units or nursing rooms in the office.

By Utilizing The Natural Touch

Vitamin D is an employee’s friend! Working under fluorescent lights can burn someone out. Sunlight is a natural mood booster. Plants clean the air and release chemicals that help us feel less stressed. With all those benefits, there’s no reason not to allow nature inside the office.

The light from office windows of any size can be maximized by leaving them uncovered for as much of the day as possible. If the office is already open-plan, light will be able to travel easily. However, in place of traditional walls, it might be a good idea to consider the installation of glass walls, which can eliminate the need for long hours of unhealthy artificial lighting.

Trendy and Innovative Solutions for Every Office Space

When you want to transform an office, look no further than Space Plus, a division of The Sliding Door Company. Our wide range of top-quality office interior doors, privacy walls, room dividers and completely customizable options add timeless elegance and functionality to the office space. Get started with a free consultation at 1-888-869-1850.