The Lasting Impact the Pandemic Will Have on Salon Design

While you may be allowing your vaccinated team and clients in the salon without masks and relaxing your social distancing standards as COVID-19 cases trend downward, the jury is still out on how the pandemic will impact overall salon design in the future. As part of our Designing Minds series, Giampiero Stuani, president of Gamma & Bross, made his predictions to the following question:

SALON TODAY: What kind of lasting impact do you think COVID-19 will have on salon design?

Stuani: From the experience we have had worldwide, we can see a general trend in salon design toward social distancing. Even in regions where distancing wasn’t enforced by the laws, we are noticing two major salon design trends:

Client Separation: Especially in the shampoo area, where we increased the sales of shampoo stations with privacy walls, which were created to let the clients feel more relaxed within their private space, but now with a heightened sense of safety.

Reduced Number of Stations: In the past salon owners wanted to have as many stations as they could fit in the space, event if they didn’t really need or use them. Now, owners prefer to get fewer shampoo and stylings stations with a high quality and unique design, then leave more space between stations and furniture elements, with an overall efficiency in the salon flow and improvement in the design, because good design requires proper spacing. This isn’t only a pandemic trend—this has also been encouraged by the increase of bookings compared to walk-in clients. Now, salons are more organized, are open longer hours, tend to have fewer people in the salon at any one time, and they can do business with fewer stations.