When you think ” commercial awning ,” what mental picture pops into your head? Probably the always-popular traditional sloped awning that shades a storefront and protects pedestrians from sun and rain. Looks nice, doesn’t it? Welcoming. Colorful, perhaps.
Take a close look at your facility, from an “awnings” perspective, and you’ll immediately notice two things:
- Even the smallest business has at least one great place to put an awning.
- The more you look, the more spaces you’ll probably identify where awnings would be a great addition. These spaces are not all the same, in size or shape. In fact, they may differ greatly.
But a commercial awning doesn’t have to be that traditional angled shape. And awnings can be virtually any size. It all comes down to what space you want to cover and the look you want to achieve.
So if you have an oddly shaped area you thought was too awkward for a commercial awning, you’re in luck. You can even create an unusually-shaped commercial awning deliberately, to attract extra attention and interest.
First, you have to define the purpose of your commercial awning.
What do you want it to do for you? Every awning serves at least one purpose, and most of them fill multiple roles. Whether your commercial awning is permanent or seasonal, you can use it to:
- Improve the appearance of your façade.
- Identify your business and draw attention to it.
- Make your main entrance or service entrance easier to find
- Expand sales area for food and beverage service, entertainment or some other purpose.
- Provide shade.
- Protect both people and physical objects, by covering walkways, parking areas, outdoor work areas such as loading docks, drive-through porticoes for valet parking, etc.
- Add a seasonal exterior vestibule.
A commercial awning can be as small and simple as a doorway accent or as large as a block-long run of window awnings. It can be part of a series that defines an entire shopping mall or a campus with multiple buildings such as a medical center or school. It can be an umbrella that covers a single table for two or an expansive tension membrane that covers a pool, a children’s play area or a performance stage.
Once you know the role – or the many roles – you want your commercial awning to play for your business, you’re ready to consider its shape and size.
You can customize more than the shape and size of your commercial awning.
For instance, consider color. How you use fabric colors can make a commercial awning appear larger or smaller. Color can accentuate your awning’s shape. It can make your awning stand out boldly against the background of your building’s exterior or the businesses that flank you.
Or you can take a very different approach. The latest trend calls for using color shades that match or blend very subtly with the color of your façade. The result is an almost seamless visual transition from your building’s exterior to your commercial awning.
Even all-metal Mapes awnings that provide a very different industrial look come in colors and offer customization options.
If you can dream it up, a full-service commercial awning company can build it.
Of course not every structural or covering option is the best choice for every size or shape commercial awning, but that’s just one of the areas where your professional awning company can help guide you. And if creative awning design isn’t your forte, no worries. That’s why you team up with outside experts.
Talk to them about the shape and size of your various spaces, and what you want each commercial awning to do for your business. With their help, you can achieve precisely what you want – even if you aren’t quite sure yet what that is.
