Outdoor Design:
Making The Most of your Space
Mark Bithrey
March 2021
With outdoor restaurants and bars due to open in a couple of weeks in the UK, here’s a quick guide to making the best of your spaces.
Open air vs covered
The summer is going to be mega profitable for restaurants & bars, and especially those that have incorporated a bit of outdoors into their design. If you are wondering if you should go open-roof or sheltered, my suggestion is to find flexible design that does a bit of both – offer your customer the choice.
For The Silver Birch, we put in a retractable awning. Drawn in when it’s beautiful and sunny, rolled out when it’s a bit too hot, or it decides to drizzle. And it will decide to drizzle. Remember “April showers…” Also consider parasols – easy, affordable, flexible. When Frescobaldi in Mayfair London decided to enhance their outdoor space, B3 helped pull it all together with parasols.
The Silver Birch has beautiful bifold doors that open up into the outdoor courtyard, letting the sunlight stream through.
Photo courtesy of Frescobaldi London
Black Bear Burger’s industrial theme is followed through outdoors as well.
Choosing furniture
The rules for choosing outdoor furniture are: light, waterproof, non-fade in sunlight. You want to be able to quickly move your chairs and tables around and back inside before locking up. Cane and lightweight metal are great.
If you must put heavier furniture outside, like benches, make sure you are able to nail them down to the floor! See what B3 did for Black Bear Burger’s outdoor benches, and for Brasserie Bellanger in Paris.
Light & plants
Choose functional outdoor lighting that goes with the design concept, and be careful not to blast your customers with a spotlight. Remember they need to be easy to clean, and shouldn’t offer cubby holes for pigeons to worm their way in. Festoons are always a winner, easy to install, and add a fiesta-spirit to any outside seating area. It’s also amazing what you can do with a few twinkly lights! Excluding planting from the plan is a design-sin.
They can bring your space to life – literally. Choose plants that are low-maintenance and hardy like trachelospermum asiaticum, which if you can plant into the ground will cover your entire façade in a couple of years. See what we did for Camino, The Regent’s Park Outdoor Theatre, and Greyhound Cafe.
Outdoor seating we designed for Camino London – the lights set just the right mood.
The Champions Food Truck in Frankfurt we designed.
Other outdoor projects
Of course, if you have a food truck, you can throw all (seating) caution to the wind and focus on your truck, and your food! See what we did for the Champions Food Truck in Frankfurt.
Get in touch with B3 Designers for inputs on designing your outdoor F&B spaces!
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