Whether you’re constructing a new church building or undertaking a remodeling project, the interior design component is deserving of its own process and time frame. To help you understand the critical steps you should take, we’ve invited Jennifer Snider to share her expertise in this area.
Jennifer Snider is the McKnight Group’s Interior Designer. She has been with us for over a dozen years, working with more than 75 churches to successfully create interior designs that work.
Jennifer suggests there are some critical steps to a successful church interior design project. In part one of this series, we present the first three.
Step 1: Define Your Vision
Wisdom teaches us at a young age that if you don’t know why you’re doing something, you can easily get off track. This is especially true when it comes to interior design. If you aren’t focused on your church’s vision for the project from the start, you are likely to create an interior design that’s based on your own personal preferences rather than the image your church building needs to convey to guests and members alike.
Instead, make decisions that are outward and mission-focused, rather than focused internally. Each step of the way, these choices need to reflect the new church vision that sparked the need for a building or remodeling project in the first place.
Step 2: Assemble Your Interior Design Team
A team should consist of three to five members, depending on the extent of the project and the areas involved. If, for example, your project includes children’s spaces, you might need a subset of people who will be specifically focused on the ministry needs for that particular type of space.
Select team members who understand that your church vision must override their personal preferences for interior design. Consider who in your community has a heart for ministry and an understanding of how the look and feel of spaces can impact guests. Other reasons to keep the group small are to help everyone stay on task and make decisions in a timely manner.
Step 3: Create a Master Plan for Your Church Remodeling or New Building Project
When you’ve got your team assembled, start with the big picture. Determine the entire scope of the project, as you’d like it to unfold. When you set the sky as the limit, you allow all the components to get out on the table, and avoid missing anything that’s important. Then you can get down to the more challenging work of figuring out what works within your budget and creating a timeframe for completing the most critical elements first by prioritizing phases for your project.
Step 4 will assist you with your master plan, so stay tuned as we cover the rest of Jennifer Snider’s tips for completing a successful church interior design project in our next blog post. While you wait, take a moment to sign up for our next free i3 webinar by visiting our website. Tips like the ones in this post came from a past webinar, which gives you a sense of how helpful they can be!