The best awning design ideas can create an appealing and memorable physical presence for your small business. It’s not likely you had a hand in designing the building itself, but you can control what the “face” of your particular business looks like.
Even if your small business is part of a franchise group, you can still exert some individuality. Unless your corporation builds only stand-alone structures, the “design bosses” at headquarters understand that your façade isn’t going to be exactly the same as other franchise locations. With a little latitude and the right awning design ideas, you can personalize your store beautifully.
Awnings perform many roles for a small business.
And they can do it with flair, if they’re designed with those roles in mind. Successful awning design ideas give your small business an aesthetic boost and provide a wide range of functional benefits, too. They give your business personality, flavor.
Before you put pencil to paper, though, consider what you want to accomplish. The best ideas will allow your awning to shine in every category:
- Decorative improvement.
- Business identification.
- Branding and promotion.
- Protection from the elements.
- Creation of additional covered outdoor space.
Good awning design ideas reflect the nature of your business.
With an imaginative blend of shape, size, materials, colors, graphics and fonts, you can achieve supremely appealing results. Even that traditional slant has been reinvented. Your awning design ideas might focus on an angle that’s tall but shallow, to give a hum-drum façade maximum coverage. Or a slope that’s shallow but deep, perfect to cover plenty of outdoor seating.
Need some specific ideas?
- Unify a small store front by spanning the entire width of your business. Or separately highlight your entrance and windows to give each one its own identity.
- Above- or below-grade businesses, however common in urban settings, can be at a disadvantage. A canopy-style covering for steps leading up or down to your entry will make it easier to find.
- Choose a new variation on old-fashioned stripes – solid color awning with striped valance, or the other way around. Try a striped awning with solid color endcaps. Endcaps have extra value, because they give you another surface to show off your name.
- NYC and the surrounding communities are filled with stunning examples of period architecture. You can focus on awning design ideas that complement and even highlight architectural details, to bring out the best in your building as well as your business.
- Retractable awnings can have great value when you’re considering awning design ideas. They’re seasonally useful, adding shade that can cool your indoor space and create revenue-generating outdoor seating areas.
- Think valance. That short “skirt” that hangs from the lower edge of your awning offers any number of interesting visual variations for awning design ideas. Make the valance a contrasting color. Or give it a scalloped edge. And be sure to imprint your business name on it. That way, even if your awning retracts for the off-season, the valance will keep promoting your business.
- High end business? Adding copper or stainless steel finials or other detailing can give an elegant finishing touch to even the most understated awning.
Of course not all of us feel up to a significant design challenge.
An experienced commercial awning company can help you with every step of your creative process, from exploring awning design ideas and finalizing the graphics through selection of framing and covering materials, custom fabrication and installation. A full-service company can even show you color renderings during the process, so you can see how each idea will actually look in place before you make any final decisions.
With an awning expert by your side and the right awning design ideas, you can create a look that makes your small business stand out without looking out of place.
