Parts of a whole By Lydia TF, Interior Designer

In a restaurant, the whole experience is created by all that touches our 5 senses. The general atmosphere of the restaurant starts by the creation of the theme. Within the concept of the theme, everything matters; from the floor finish to the fabric colours and selection, everything from floors, walls, ceilings, lighting, and furniture.

Floor finishes in restaurants can be very diverse for one to match the theme but also to best suit their purpose. The colour of the floor finish produces a huge impact to the space since it’s the largest area. It can provide the luxurious elegance needed for a dinner service restaurant and also it can be a lighter finish for quick- dining restaurants with heavy traffic.

The walls are usually finished very simply as to not distract from the rest of the features created by the floor finish and the furniture. Although, there are some cases when the floor finish is kept simple and the designers choose to emphasize features in the walls

Ceilings follow next as they take up as much area as the floors but are not as noticed. Restaurants with high ceilings have the ability to do less to the ceilings, as opposed to places with lower ceilings.

Restaurants with low ceilings usually need to find a way to create elegant solutions without reducing the already low space for headroom. Some choose to make their ceiling truly become a centre piece.

Special accent lighting features and the general lighting play the part of showing the highlight of spaces. Not only does it control the overall atmosphere that we see within a space, but it also is able to direct attention to certain places more than others. We are able to manipulate the visual impact that people take back with them and thus creating a specific effect.All these factors are parts to form the whole overall restaurant. There are factors within the design that should be used very intelligently and within context. Peoples’ notion and opinion of places they visit is greatly influenced by the atmosphere created. A restaurant’s concept is its identity and without it, there would be no differentiating one place from another.

Lydia TF is a former student in interior and product design of Accademia Italiana Bangkok and Florence. She is currently working at Fenn Designers as practicing interior designer.

The goal of her blog posts is to present her take on things all around us: the posts will touch on things from general observations to specific detailing for projects and more. Fenn is a full service design practice dedicated to Master Planning Architecture and interior design. http://www.fenndesigners.com/