How to Attract Tenants With Your Lobby Design
First impressions are everything.
When prospective tenants enter a residential or commercial building, they walk through the lobby first, formulating opinions quickly. A unit or office may be beautiful, but the lobby serves as the face of your property and should accurately depict your company’s brand and culture.
Follow these best practices to attract tenants with your lobby design:
Create an Inviting and Clean Space
Every lobby should have a welcoming vibe that is felt from outside and inside its doors. Appealing to the senses, especially sight and smell, seems like stating the obvious but is often overlooked. Hiring the right maintenance, cleaning, and landscaping companies is key to upholding the image of your property. It starts with the outside. Similar to the curb appeal of a house, maintaining the building’s exterior with improvements to the green areas, for example, can enhance the appearance of your property. Keep sidewalks, walkways, and steps swept of debris as well. Inside, floors, surfaces, and walls should be spotless. In addition, designing the interior with indoor plants and art can create a more aesthetically pleasing environment for tenants.
Make Your Lobby an Extension of the Community
Knowing your neighborhood goes a long way with tenants. When you adapt your lobby to your neighborhood, be it an urban or suburban environment, you foster community, according to Building Design + Construction. they write,
“Create a brand and a place that amplifies the unique qualities of your neighborhood.”
A property located in an urban environment with a wide variety of entertainment, dining and socializing opportunities should feature a lobby that complements those easily accessible amenities, while providing options that will benefit the larger community and bring visitors, commerce and new interest to your building.
Host Lobby Events
People are attracted to a crowd, and when they see others gathering in a space, it piques their curiosity. Whether for an office or condo building, lobby events provide an opportunity for face-to-face interactions with current and prospective tenants. Kirk Layton, President & Founder of the Canadian-based Eservus Online Concierge Services, says this personal touch is much stronger than a building newsletter or tweet. “You only have a few seconds to grab people’s attention in the building lobby…after all, tenants in the lobby are always on their way to somewhere else – to work, to lunch or to a meeting – which makes it difficult to capture their attention,” he writes. “Lobby events are an indispensable part of a property manager’s tenant engagement strategy.”
The Bottom Line
The design of your lobby presents an ongoing opportunity to attract and retain tenants. In today’s ultra-competitive market, demonstrating that you care about tenant comfort and their needs through strategic design is a significant differentiator.