Welcome Spaces: Integrate Audiovisual into Lobby to Keep Guests Coming Back

BUILDING DIALOGUE

Yesterday’s lobby is now a welcome center that treats its visitor to an experience. Today, businesses use audiovisual technology to inform, inspire and entertain their guests starting from the entryway and continuing throughout their facility. Let’s explore some of the AV solutions that help create a unique and welcoming space.

Environmental lighting. Whether creating night/day effects, a tropical rain forest or a busy street – environmental lighting is a key building block of your design. LED lighting allows fixtures to be hidden or become art themselves. Automated digital controllers can also create light of any imaginable color or intensity.

Habitat soundscaping. Yesterday’s noise-masking is today’s soundscaping, and it comes into effect from the moment you walk into a place of business. An iconic water feature in the lobby becomes a natural environmental sound carried throughout the building – promoting collaboration, mental focus and wellness.

Digital signage. Lobbies commonly are associated with waiting areas. While your visitors wait, a centrally controlled digital signage system can display your message in an appealing fashion and help answer questions before guests even speak to a receptionist. The system also can automatically change the message to align with the time of day or day of the week.

Wayfinding. The No. 1 question most visitors ask when they enter a space for the first time is something like, “How do I get to where I need to go?” Wayfinding provides a touch screen display that welcomes your visitors and intuitively assists them find their destination using moving graphics and/or a personal video greeting.

Environmental projection and LED walls. Imagine your walls as an artist’s canvass. Environmental projection and direct-view LED walls can transport your visitors to a field of wheat, a yacht in the Caribbean or the center field of a baseball diamond by crafting an image that spans the walls of your welcome center.

Wall art. Wall art can become the center of any welcome area, yet it is costly to commission and maintain. Display technology, on the other hand, can transform your business into an art museum for half the cost. Resting on a digital signage platform, displays can be recessed into the wall and framed to perfectly emulate a traditional display of pieces by Monet, Rembrandt or Picasso and provide your guest with an experience they won’t soon forget.

Published in the December 2019 issue of Building Dialogue.