Waiting rooms are the essence of any user experience. This is the room by which your patients and customers get to know your business. They’ll be able to make a lot of decisions about your business just by sitting in it and waiting to be assisted. This is why your aim is to create a professional yet comfortable and warm waiting room. After all, you want the people that come in to feel taken care of from the first minute of their visit.
1. Add a play area
If your main customers are families and people with small children, it’s imperative that you add a play area. Kids are extremely impatient and don’t like waiting for longer periods of time. If they have to sit down and be quiet, you can bet they’ll look for ways to make trouble and cause mischief. Whether it’s running around the waiting room, crying or screaming, it’s bound to be annoying to anyone in close vicinity.
All you have to do is keep them busy to stop the aforementioned mischief. Your play area should involve a lot of puzzles suitable for kids of different ages, as well as some colourful toys. It will occupy them enough to keep them quiet and everyone around them calm.
2. Natural light
If you want to get rid of the artificial environment that causes headaches, often present in waiting rooms, you’ll need to minimize the effects of artificial lighting. Improper waiting rooms especially seem to rely on the support of long and unnecessary lights which create a disturbing glow and often flicker and buzz.
This problem can be solved by adding more big windows to your waiting room. Not only will this add more sunshine, but it will also make the waiting room seem bigger. Both of these facts mean your patients will feel much more welcomed and comfortable, instead of like sardines in a can.
3. More oxygen is a must
Waiting rooms tend to be crowded and stuffy. No one likes going to a place where they’re forced to wait in a claustrophobic not aired out room. Even if you have windows or an AC on, it still doesn’t help much. There’s always someone that’s too cold or too hot and they’re bound to complain about it until you tailor the temperature to their needs, which leaves everyone else unhappy.
A simple way to introduce more oxygen without compromising the temperature in any way is to add more plants. They make for nice décor and really tie the place together, but they also create a ton more oxygen which makes it easier to breathe.
In turn, your customers or patients won’t be tired and weary or eager to just get out of there. It’s amazing of how much frustration a little extra oxygen can get rid of.
4. Think of colour
Regardless of the colour of the rest of your building, the waiting room needs to tell its own story. The purpose is to soothe people and keep them relaxed. You can easily achieve this effect with the right colour. The walls can speak for you, but perhaps adding splashes of colour to the furniture offers more opportunity to play with the effects. For example, green and yellow will inspire positive emotions of growth and happiness, while blue will offer peace of mind to your audience. If you want to keep them alert, opt for something passionate like orange or red.
Of course, choosing the right tone of these colours is imperative, too, as it can end up being too soft or too bright. This will either render the effects useless or annoy your customers and give them headaches. You can also choose to incorporate the colours of your company into the waiting room if you aim for uniformity and a more professional and coherent look.
5. Add a beverage dispenser
Whether it’s a commercial coffee machine or a vending machine, your waiting room will benefit from it greatly. No one knows how long the wait is going to be. The people are bound to grow tired of just sitting around. This way, they’ll be able to grab some refreshments while they wait. No one likes being stuck with nothing to do, so they might as well grab a cup of coffee or a soda and relax a little.
The refreshments will keep their energy levels up and, in turn, their patience. This leaves you with happy customers who don’t mind waiting around because you’ve given them something to do. You’ve also given them the perfect tool to calm their nerves and socialize. With this show of care, no one’s going to hold it against you that they had to sit in the waiting room for so long.
6. Choose comfy furniture
The more comfortable the furniture, the better for your customers. It’s much nicer to sit on a big and soft couch than on a few sturdy chairs. High quality should be your aim here, as that type of furniture will feel better and serve you longer. You don’t want to keep buying new furniture every few years because it got worn out, ripped, or just isn’t as comfy as it used to be.
Another thing you should think about in terms of comfort is how you organize your furniture. You don’t want the armchairs to be too close to each other, but you also need to save as much room as possible. You also need to pay attention that there are areas for groups and singles. To take care of all these variables at once, perhaps it’s best to opt for waiting benches. These types of couches can stand on their own and be combined into bigger seating areas, automatically fulfilling all the needs of your customers.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are actual and comfortable things you can do with your waiting room, regardless of how drab you may think it is. These things will help you create the most welcome waiting room you can, thus making everyone content and happy, and more likely to stick around without complaining while they wait.