It’s important to make your new or remodeled church building feel welcoming and for it to create a great first impression. We associate home with welcoming and comfortable. While having a homey feel to the interior design of your church building may be a great idea, home looks different to everyone. The key is to create a space that makes people feel welcome, comfortable, and safe. A space that is hospitable and friendly. To accomplish that goal, you may consider design elements that feel like home, using materials that are found in many homes though is not a good idea. Even the most home-like church interior still needs an interior design with commercial grade finishes and furnishings.
Why Your Church Building Needs Commercial Grade Furnishings
For a number of reasons, it’s not wise to install residential finishes and furnishings in your church building. First, while your church building may feel like home, it comes under the codes and requirements for commercial spaces, rather than residential building codes. This means that many types of flooring and furniture that you might use in your home cannot be used in your church. Commercial grade products have different fire code ratings, for example, which make them required for church interior design applications.
Other reasons you need commercial grade finishes in your church building relates to good stewardship. You get what you pay for, to a great extent. Commercial grade interior design furnishings may cost a little more, but they will also last longer, especially since you will have a large number of people using your church building every week. Good quality commercial grade finishes will also be easier to maintain.
Getting Inspiration from Interior Design Site Observations
So how do you make your church interior design feel welcoming, but still use commercial grade products? We strongly suggest that you make site visits to other church buildings in your area, along with other welcoming professional spaces such as real estate offices, restaurants, and retail outlets.
The idea with these site visits is to get a sense of what people in your community are accustomed to, in terms of interior design. These are all places that locals are visiting. Therefore, if they see other spaces—like your church building—that look similar, they will feel at home. We suggest taking pictures of interior design elements that you like. This will help you convey those images to other members of your team. It will also allow you to compare ideas and images to help come up with a design plan that fits your community but is also unique to your church and ministry.
One more important element to your site observations is the question of your church vision for ministry in your community. Will these interior design elements fit with your vision for your new or remodeled church building? Will these finishes and furnishings fit with the vision you’re trying to achieve, to bring people to Christ?
Is Now a Time to Involve Professionals?
As you are gathering images and ideas for your church building, it’s also a good time to ask the question of whether you could benefit from the expertise of a professional. Such experienced leaders can guide you in the process of integrating your ideas into a cohesive whole that will indeed welcome to your guests.
One good way to experience more site observations is to sign up for our free i3 webinars. With each webinar, you get to see more of the interior design of church buildings that we have worked on. These glimpses could give you even more ideas to incorporate into the interior design of your own church building.