Our blog series on making a good first impression with your church interior design has covered many elements in a church building, ranging from worship space to restrooms. When the design is done, there is still something that will help those great first impressions continue and that is maintaining your significant interior design investment.
Implement Your Church Interior Design Plan Thoughtfully
Once you’ve made the various important decisions about what you will do with walls, flooring, furnishings, and finishes, it’s time to bring the design to fruition. If you’re constructing a new church building, then your construction company will take care of ordering materials and scheduling the installations in the right order. If you’re working on a church remodeling project instead, one where church leaders might be responsible for some of the implementation, then it’s wise to think about the best order in which you want things to happen.
For example, you will most likely want to attend to all wall and ceiling work before you install any new flooring, to prevent any damage to your new flooring during wall painting or installation of stonework or metal accents. You also don’t want to have new furniture delivered until after the church interior design work is done unless you have plenty of safe and climate-controlled storage space for all those boxes.
Remember to Include Maintenance in Your Post-Installation Checklist
Once everything is installed in your church building, the work isn’t really over. A good first impression isn’t a constant, in the sense that floors will get scuffed, carpets spilled on, walls dinged, and furniture scratched over the course of time. For your church building to keep making a good first impression, you need to invest in proper maintenance of all these elements of your church interior design.
Good stewardship requires an investment in your church building, in the form of regular maintenance. Floors need polishing, walls need cleaning and sometimes touch-up paint, while furniture needs mending and sometimes refinishing, especially in youth and children’s areas.
Preserve That First Impression with a Church Building Maintenance Plan
Those are all reasons why we recommend that you have a church building maintenance plan. Especially if you don’t have a dedicated custodial staff, you will need to document proper maintenance for each element of your church interior design and create a plan for routine care to maintain that carefully thought-out good first impression. That way, everyone who participates in keeping your church building in good shape is aiming toward the same goals and maintaining that same church vision for ministry in your community.
All of these tips for making a good first impression were first shared with church leaders during one of our free i3 webinars. We hold these webinars regularly to keep you up to date on the latest and best practices for church design and construction of a new church building. We are currently putting the finishing touches on next year’s webinars, so stay tuned for a new list. Meanwhile, feel free to search our treasure trove of existing articles for ideas and innovations.