School Staff Room Design principles
Designing a school staff room refurbishment can be an enjoyable process. A new staffroom design is an instant boost for staff morale. The room can reflect the style of a school or lead the way in adding a new dimension through a design update. Increasingly a school staff room has several roles and balancing these in an effective and relaxing environment takes a bit of thought. There are some basic principles that’re worth a mention.
-
Prioritise the important uses for the staff room space.
In most cases a staffroom will be a breakout area. We’re also seeing lots of requests to design the space with a team meeting area. Touchdown space so that teachers can work are also common. There’s also a trend for staff rooms to serve as an interview space for prospective staff. Its vital that a design doesn’t miss the objectives by trying to fit too many roles. This is the number one reason for a staff space redesign to miss the target. Prioritising will help the designer to get the balance right.
-
Its not a station waiting room.
A classic ‘fail’ for older school staff breakout areas starts with the brave attempt to have seating for every member of staff…leading to the ‘waiting room’ syndrome. A bit like being in a Clapham Junction waiting room…wall to wall seating and not much else. We must have seen dozens of examples stuffed with linear seating. Attempts to brighten the theme using two-tone fabrics doesn’t help. A hallmark of school design from a bygone era. If you’re sacrificing style for capacity its unlikely to win approval with the post-millenials. Come to think of it…it doesn’t win approval with anyone.
-
Zoning is your friend.
Staff breakout isn’t one-size fits all. Teaching staff will often have 15 minutes at break to refresh. A quiet corner can be just the thing. A free period might give time to get some work done. Balancing on the arm of a sofa, or down to coffee table height, can’t be good for posture and probably isn’t good for focusing. For others a bit of social time is the break they need. Three very contrasting uses of the space. Add in a team space and interviews and you’ve got the potential for spaghetti junction. Zone the space. Broken-plan is tried and tested. Not only does it set the tone for different areas, zoning can also set limits on the extent of each area so that a staff space has natural head-count capacities. This really supports the design scheme and stops the overlap that over time saps the style out of a room.
-
Refuelling Speed.
We often come across the ‘hiding in plain sight’ problem. The teapoint needs to serve tens of staff, often in 15 – 20 minutes, with all the tea and coffee they need. Talk about a bottleneck. Congestion must be the number one reason for shying away from a staff room. The knock-on is that certain staff will just avoid the space altogether, effectively avoiding interaction with colleagues. School office staff in particular can duck out of staff room interactions for just this reason. Its fairly easy to scale up your boiling water / fridge space / cup and mug capacity to suit peak use. A good staff room design will bring the whole school together rather than dividing people by access to fridge and kettle.
- Comfort.
All to often the waiting room syndrome extends to the furniture choice. When its a free for all and staff sit everywhere to eat, furniture is chosen for practical reasons first and foremast. Going back to zoning…good definition of space allows more diverse choice of furniture. In nice finishes. That can be comfortable, whilst the hard wearing canteen chairs can nestle in the eating zone. Freeing up soft seating to actually be soft can be a wonder. Try it.
- Colour and Texture.
We’ve touched on diverse furniture. Add in wall finishes, flooring and balanced lighting and pretty soon you’re on the right track. Back to our friend ‘zoning’ again. You can be creative when zones are defined. Don’t limit yourself to a single paint colour on walls. Try out ideas for inset rugs within harder-wearing vinyl flooring for travel routes. Add texture and pattern on fabrics and wallcoverings. Use lighting to offset strong overhead lighting by adding a table lamp of freestanding lamp. These are all the tools of the trade for designers, but all too often a staff room settles for a few furniture styles and forgets about the overall decorative effect. Decorative touches don’t need to be overdone…just a few accents add character. These elements are where the battle to establish a design scheme is won or lost.
- Branding. Please don’t.
When searching for a design direction it can be tempting to start with branding for colour schemes and other design elements. That’s probably the last thing you want when escaping the maelstrom. Very much on-trend in design circles is the crossover of domestic lounge style with the practical, large scale, characteristics of staff rooms. Think of it as the best of hotel design influencing school breakout spaces. You’re seeing it in offices as well. Scandi, faux heritage, contemporary…whatever feels right for the architectural context. But never branded. Speaking of architecture…some of our most successful design schemes have moved the staff room interior away from institutional, towards a softer style. Even when stuck with a limitation such as a suspended ceiling we used a light blue ‘sky’ tone paint to get away from standard school building finishes.
- Attracting the good guys.
There’s a saying about ‘silent salesman’. Something that helps you to get your message across. When interviewing new staff it most certainly helps to have a great staff room. To paraphrase Maya Angelou…she said that they’ll forget what you said, but remember how you made them feel. A staff room design that you’re proud of can make people feel good. And the staff room can be such a departure from teaching and student rooms that it can convey an extra dimension about the SLT and the school. Get the style right and the silent salesman will work every time.
There you have it….the principles we refer to for a high level staff room design guide. There’s one we didn’t mention…honesty. Fusion are occasionally the bearer of bad news. If your staff room just isn’t capable to supporting every purpose and role; if the architecture is too restrictive for a particular design makeover; if you can’t really accommodate every person on the staff list or reconfigure the room to hold 50 round a meeting table…be honest and don’t set the bar way beyond the realms of possibility.
To see some examples of our designs for staff rooms click here …or give us a call and we can spring into action redesigning your staff room.