Decorating and Design - Urgent- Decorating a new coffee house

Hi, I am grateful to have found your site. I have the huge task of decorating a new coffee house. We have to purchase tables, chairs, cabinets, lighting and paint the walls. We are also purchasing carpeting. I started designing everything around the tables and chairs. However, we just discovered that the furniture manufacturer made a huge mistake and sold our tables and chairs. Now I have to start over. We have nothing and need to order things SOON... in order to open the doors on schedule. We want a soothing, relaxed atmosphere that is different than any other coffee house we have been in, elegant and artsy. But we don't want to decorate it so that people feel uncomfortable stopping in while wearing jeans and tee shirts. This is a university town where everyone lives in tee shirts and jeans. I would like something stunning here. My intuition tells me to decorate with peaches, apricots, autumnal colors--with carpeting that is comfortable rather than wood floors... Cabinets? I don't know. We will have a lot of cabinets and I don't want them too dark. Please, help. I am refusing to paint or carpet until the other choices are made and am being pressured to paint and carpet first...HELP AGAIN. Bless you.

I'm not quite sure what your asking for...but, why don't you just order the same tables and chairs you previously ordered.

The supplier made an error and they should be responsible by getting you your product in a timely fashion.

Okay...when I think of coffee house, I think of a mixture of bistro tables/chairs...and comfy overstuffed armchairs surrounding coffee tables. Rich colors (I think the autumn/fall type colors you're thinking of are great). And I'd mix up the wood tones...dark, light, medium.

So...I'd consider purchasing chairs/tables that are fairly clean-lined. This allows you to decorate around them, without competing with them. I know nothing about shopping for restaurants/stores, so I have no idea where to direct you for that! But I assume that you have that information already.

Then...
What about shopping for comfy armchairs at used furniture shops? They can be all different styles, fabrics, etc...you can group the ones that best work together. And for ones that don't go together at ALL, keep those in separate groupings away from one another. You could also find some funky coffeetables there as well. You can use them as-is, or paint/stain them, and/or put glass tops on them.

I think wood floors (ie: Pergo, or perhaps reclaimed old wood floors that have some character to them?) are the way to go, with area rugs to 'break up' the room. That's just my opinion. It would soften the place up, which sounds like the look you're going for. A homey, comfy place.

I don't think you want 'matchy matchy' on cabinets/furniture, so I wouldn't worry about matching wood tones, etc. But, I'd probably try and stick with clean-lined, almost contemporary styles for those items. Because, again, it allows you to go funkier (or whatever) on the 'extras' like wall color, rugs, etc.

Hope this helps...just my .02! :)
Best wishes!

i, too, love the autumn colors - rich & warm, anchored with a really dark brown/almost black accent. :thumbup:

but i'm leary of the flooring issue. wall to wall carpet will be trashed in no time, but i guess plenty of restaurants are carpeted. area rugs over hard floors also scares me because of the tripping factor. so i think i'd either go wall to wall carpet, or just wood floors. as long as the wood floors are of a nice, rich, darkish color, they won't seem cold or sterile, especially if you can do them in a two-tone, inlaid type of pattern somehow - maybe inset a border of a lighter/darker color around the perimeter, or do a different color under seating areas, to imply an area rug of sorts.

if you go with carpet, choose one with a funky pattern & lots of colors, to hide the inevitable stains. if you go this route, choose this first and then coordinate everything else around it. i think this will be the item with the most impact and the fewest choices, so start here.

i'd paint the walls in color blocks, to break up the space & create smaller areas, to frame artwork or groupings of artwork, and so you can interject more colors. if there's a ceiling to paint, i'd go medium to dark (gold to chocolate), so it disappears.

and i, too, would mix & match the chair & table styles, for a really funky, eclectic look. to keep it eclectic and not chaotic, keep the pieces all within a certain range of color, be it wood tones or paint, etc. i don't think they necessarily need to be streamlined in style - actually i think the more detailed & interesting each piece is, the better. if you go this route, and with a fairly patterned carpet, then keep any upholstery on the chairs fairly solid or small-scale patterned.

Okay...I had another thought on this while driving into work today! Have you ever been to a Panera Bread restaurant? They do all of these things...mix of tables/chairs/armchairs, flooring, rugs, etc. Anyway, they also always have a fireplace that armchairs are congregated around. Nowadays, you can purchase free-standing fireplaces that are electric (which is what I imagine the ones at Panera Bread are), but they look quite realistic...and they even give off a bit of heat! This would really 'warm up' the space, and make it very inviting. Low maintenance, simple, fairly inexpensive, but they create an ambiance!

Thank you Annette and CarlyFC,

You both offered me some great ideas. I am still working on a few problems, like the long rectangular shape of the main room for the coffee house. Any suggestions about this? Also, the second room that we are renting connected to the long rectangular room has a built-in accordion type divider screen. It is ugly, like the ones in old office buildings. I am thinking of trying to cover the screen with a decorative type of netting just to hide it....for the time being. Later we will probably have it removed. Any suggestions on this one?

Your ideas are wonderful and help me generate some of my own. :)

Ishpenar

We want a soothing, relaxed atmosphere
You could get the forms and colours right on,

and yet

still watch customers turn in their chairs and wince everytime that espresso machine screams steamed milk resounding off hard floors, walls, ceiling. A general vibe of kitchen machinery subliminally humming, whirring, chugging, gets under the skin (refrigeration compressors can be downright alarming) and does more harm to the atmosphere - at least unconsciously - than pretty decor can hold up to.

Imagine tea ceremony in a plain tatami room. Now imagine a refrigerator humming in the corner. See, the soothing relaxed atmosphere wasn't the presence of things; it was the absence of them.

So, get the acoustics under control and you may find customers contentedly nesting in ugly, second hand decor just as naturally as they'd picnic in the shade of a rusty tractor.

Carpet, all the way. Rubber mats behind the counter. Acoustic panels and tiles on walls, ceilings. All sorts of curtains and tapestries help too. Anything with a motor in it should be padded to keep vibrations from spreading. Ducting can be wrapped. And so on... there's a lot to be done here. Not very glamorous, I know, nothing photographic. But if you want a soothing, relaxed atmosphere that is different than any other coffee house you've been in, this is the foundation.

So, get the acoustics under control and you may find customers contentedly nesting in ugly, second hand decor just as naturally as they'd picnic in the shade of a rusty tractor.
Wow, I think that was uncalled for! Did anyone here recommend ugly used furniture? I sure didn't!

Speaking as someone who has donated plenty of very lovely furniture to the local Salvation Army store, I happen to know that you can purchase (and inexpensively) some very nice items at those types of stores.

I also buy & sell items through local consignment (second-hand) shops. Again, and some stores are better than others, you CAN find very nice, high quality, in-good-condition pieces of furniture in these types of stores. You just have to look around.

Your comments/suggestions regarding accoustics are good. Naturally, that should be considered. But, I'm not convinced that wall-to-wall carpet versus hardwood (possibly mixed w/ area rugs) would make much difference. A loud appliance/machine is a loud appliance/machine.

But, look at Starbucks stores. They have all their appliances right out in the open behind the counter. So there must be a way to do this, without knocking people out of their seats!

In terms of your question, ishpenar, regarding how to organize the space? So, what are the dimensions of this rectangular space? And what do you need to fit into that space? The furniture for seating AND the appliances, counter, etc?

Finally, I'm trying to picture the type of 'accordion style' room divider you're describing, and I'm not picturing it! This is a fixed divider? Not a temporary and moveable wall?