How to Design a Home Gym: Planning the Optimal Layout

It is also recommended that gym layouts feature zoned areas in terms of the equipment, creating distinctive cardio, strength and stretching or yoga areas. Each of these areas come with individual considerations that will impact the overall layout of the gym.

For the first incarnation of any home gym, it’s also advisable to only fill the space up to 75 per cent. “Fitness is an ever-evolving pursuit and if the user takes up a new discipline in the future, this extra space will allow for new additions, such as specialist machines,” adds Edward.

Cardio Area

Access to equipment

Leaving enough space to get on and off equipment might sound obvious, but it is often overlooked during the planning of a gym layout. This is a particularly important consideration for cardio equipment, with treadmills accessed from the back, and bikes and cross trainers accessed from the side.

Minimum safety clearance

Manufacturers will require that treadmills are positioned with a minimum safety clearance of at least one metre behind for safety purposes. In smaller spaces, this can be challenging and will often dictate the layout of the room.

Ceiling height

Cardio equipment requires ample ceiling height, which may also dictate the layout of a gym, particularly in spaces with pitched roofs.

Power supply

Cardio equipment generally needs to be powered and, therefore, positioned near power sockets. While more flexibility can be added to the gym layout with self-powered equipment, these versions don’t feature touchscreen displays. Installing floor boxes with power sockets is another solution that allows for flexibility in the layout of powered cardio equipment without visible wiring.

Television

It’s advisable that all cardio equipment faces a television as these are the machines that people spend the longest duration on and may like to watch TV or an online class while doing so. It’s important, therefore, to consider the distances between the machines and the TV.

Strength Area

Flooring

As strength areas usually incorporate free weights, such as dumbbells or Olympic barbells, a different type of flooring will be needed in this area to provide protection.

Multi-functional equipment

Traditional strength equipment takes up a lot of space, but modern-day solutions allow gym designers to optimise the number of strength exercises per square metre. Choosing multi-functional equipment can allow more layout flexibility by incorporating many different exercises into a single footprint.

Working area

A lot of strength equipment, such as dual-adjustable pulleys or power racks, requires a certain amount of working area around it. These working areas are not included in the item’s CAD block, which many interior designers and architects rely on to plan a gym layout. As such, it is important to check the recommended working area for each piece of equipment and draw that onto any plans to ensure that users will have space to move around it and exercise to the full potential of the machine. 

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This week’s instalment of Project of the Week series features a rebranded gym design by 2021 SBID Awards Finalist, Adimari Studio.

What was the client's brief? 

The client wanted us to convert an old abandoned communist restaurant underground into a new, inviting and playful fitness space. The interior had to have a dual function – once as a gym and then as the official showroom for the Balkans/Eastern Europe of the Italian handmade gym equipment brand – Panatta. Fitness Flex is a chain of gyms and our purpose, upon the client brief, was to completely rebrand it, so we adapted the space guided by the concept of ​​"Flex Goes Green and Gold” and split the two floors into a “Green” Cardio Floor with lighter colours, wood and mirrors and a “Gold” Floor for heavy weight-lifting with black and gold accents.

What inspired the design of the project?

Many elements came into play when creating this design. The key for us was to create bold transitions and juxtapose the “Green” and “Gold” floors through contrasting colours and textures yet still create a cohesive experience and unified, balanced design. A tunnel with a vertical garden takes you to the “Green” floor with all the cardio and lighter training equipment. We combined warm wood and moss walls with cold marble-effect tiles for the first floor. In contrast, the entrance to the lower "Gold" level is highlighted by tall vertical gold elements, which you can also see on the walls and ceiling. The different lengths of the golden elements on the ceiling, the mirrors and also the lights that continue from them create interesting visual dynamics.

What was the toughest hurdle your team overcame during the project?

Our main challenge was to completely demolish the interior of the existing underground restaurant, raise the ceiling as much as possible and create different functional zones for training within the very irregular shape of the interior, filled with columns, sharp angles and concrete beams. The space is completely underground and our main goal was to take the consumer’s attention away from that so we brought the outside in. We introduced wallpapers with natural scenery, walls clad in artificial greenery and moss and plenty of lighting and reflective surfaces to maximize the light and space, including dressing each column and beam we considered unnecessary in mirrors.

What was your team’s highlight of the project?

We all fell in love with the black and white marble chevron tiling by Marazzi at entrance. Creating different zones within the space by switching up the colour or the material of the flooring altogether was a very fun design approach for us which would not have been possible in a different space. The flooring is all special non-porous, antibacterial virgin rubber by Paviflex which no water, liquid or sweat can penetrate, making the space safer, more hygienic and ease to clean. We wanted our design to be captivating but also functional.

Why did you enter this project into the SBID Awards?

Our studio is relatively young and small. We pride ourselves in our work and we wanted to exhibit it at an international stage. Bulgarian interior design is growing and we believe there’s many impressive, well executed designs which should be presented to the world to show that. SBID awards is a great place for that.

Questions answered by Marina Marinova, Senior Interior Designer, Adimari Studio.

Project of the Week: SBID Awards Finalists 2019

This week's instalment of the #SBIDinspire interior design series features a private underground entertainment space for an ambitious London client. Nice Brew Design were commissioned to design the 530 square metre space which was built under an existing 1920s detached home in London. Working alongside the Architect and dealing with various restrictions, Nice Brew Design came up with a large open space with the use of visual zoning to divide up each entertainment area, but also ensure the space as a whole was unified through the interior design scheme and layout throughout. 

SBID Awards: Residential Design Over £1M finalist sponsored by THG Paris

Practice: Nice Brew Design

Project: Private Entertainment Space

Location: London, United Kingdom

What was the client's brief? 

The space needed to include a large gym and shower room, WCs, two-lane bowling alley, dance area and DJ booth, an IMAX cinema to seat up to 20 people, bar area that would double up as a meeting space, a wine room, pool table and various seating areas - including an area with five screens for multi-screen sport watching.  The space was going to have various types of end-users; the family, teenagers and friends – but was also going to be used for large corporate events and needed to have a sophiscated AV and lighting system, as well as be hard-wearing where possible.

What inspired the interior design of the project? 

The Art Deco style was our background inspiration, as well as creating the atmosphere and style of a traditional Gentleman’s club. However, the design concept actually resulted in a more modern, minimal take on this.

What was your team’s highlight of the project?

The opportunity to work on such a varied project was fantastic. At times it felt like 5 projects in one! Design work started in 2015 with construction kicking off early in 2016 and the project completing in November 2018. As such it was a detailed and an all time consuming project. Finally seeing the designs realised after so much time was definitely the highlight.

What was the toughest hurdle your team overcame during the project?

Two things stand out. Firstly the acoustics of the space. Noise from music, and in particular the bowling alley, needed to be retained within the basement and it was essential that it didn’t travel into the house or the gardens above, as it is a residential area.  Acoustic plaster from Stil acoustics was used on the ceilings; acoustic glass and doors were specified for the glass encased staircase that leads to the main house and the wine room, as well as to the floor to ceiling bronze doors that separate the house and bunker staircase. The bespoke bronze doors to the external entrance at underground level were also acoustic specified and a copper clad box that encases the external staircase from the garden level was designed to further ensure noise was kept below ground.

Another challenge we faced was that the space was restricted. Position was governed by the fact that The Bunker needed to link to the main house above as well as have an external entrance. Originally the project was designed as a two storey bunker but it was then discovered that the existing borehole only went down 6m and a further test resulted in the conclusion that this would be a complex construction and was updated to a single storey proposal instead.

Why did you enter the SBID Awards?

We felt the project deserved to be recognised and the SBID Awards are the one to aim for within the industry!

Questions answered by Charlotte Jackson, Creative Director at Nice Brew Design

If you missed last week's Project of the Week featuring a stunning Shanghai residence located in the heart of Shanghai’s Pudong district, click here to see more.

We hope you feel inspired by this week's Residential design! Let us know what inspired you #SBIDinspire

SBID Awards 2019 | Residential Design Over £1M finalist sponsored by THG Paris