Designing a changing room

If you are considering designing a cloakroom, whether it is for a leisure club, a school or your business, this handy guide aims to steer you round common pitfalls and highlight areas you should be focusing on.

As with all spaces, the lighter and more well-designed they are, the better impression you will make. This is especially important with changing facilities as they tend to be one of the first areas visitors will see. A pleasant changing experience is sure to leave a great impression and leave people keen to make a repeat visit, but providing an area where people feel cramped and liable to crack their shins on poorly placed benches is going to make any return trip very unlikely.

We all understand that budgets play a part, and everyone like a bargain, however decisions based solely on price can often be regretted. This is especially true if the finish ends up not reflecting the high-end status your establishment or customers demand.

Don’t forget that as well as the functional necessities, such as showers and toilets, you need to allow adequate space for all the equipment and baggage people will be bringing with them. There should be enough storage space in lockers for valuables and bags and plenty of hangers to allow clothing to be off the floor. You should also consider some cubicles for those who like to change in private.

• Flooring should be comfortable enough for bare feet, yet hard wearing enough to cope with trainers or sports shoes.
• The changing room seats should be durable, clean and deep enough to sit on comfortably
• Captive hangers should be available as well as adequate room for people to use their own garment hangers.
• You should provide a generous amount of space where clothes and bags can be kept off the floor to prevent them getting wet or dirty.
• Large lockers should be provided that can accommodate bags, shoes, valuables and equipment comfortably.

Gaps between Changing Room Benches:

When calculating how many people can use your changing room, you should allow a width of 500mm per person for seating. This metric is also recommended by Sports England and the Football Foundation, although you must remember not to include corners as seat space, as once there is an adjoining bench it becomes impossible to sit on.

For aisles between benches we would always recommend 1.5m as a good width for a main walkway. However, it is possible to reduce this if space is tight, but we would never recommend going below 800mm.

Bench depth is another area where generosity is appreciated by users; anything less than 350mm deep will prove to be difficult for anyone over six feet as they will only be able to perch on the edge. If designs will allow, aim for 400mm to 450mm deep – trust us, your taller users will thank you for it.

If you would like to design your own changing room and add benches from our cloakroom furniture ranges now, please try our Room Planner.