Whether you’re renovating an old space or opening a new office for your design studio, reliable technology and power are essential to your creative success.
How often have you moved into a space with too few outlets, leaving you stuck with unreliable power bars and unstable electrics? Nothing disrupts a meeting like the lights going out especially when your visuals are critical to landing the project.
Here are 5 electrical considerations to keep in mind when setting up your design studio practical tips to help avoid tripped breakers and ensure consistent power for your equipment:
George is a seasoned interior designer and property marketing strategist with over 13 years of experience. He specializes in transforming properties into visually stunning spaces, helping clients recognize the potential and beauty in each property. With an impressive international client base of exciting projects throughout Europe and America.
Dedicated Circuit Boards
Your studio will rely on power-hungry tech servers, rendering stations, large-format printers, and photo/video gear like VR modules and layout tools. Planning your electrics by zone lets you power each area separately, keeping your setup organized and scalable.
If this equipment shares a circuit with appliances like a microwave or coffee maker, you risk overloading and tripping breakers mid-project. A dedicated board ensures efficient power delivery and reduces the risk of circuit overloads or electrical fires.
Strategic Lighting Circuits & Controls
Being a design studio, you know all about lighting and how important it can be.
You’ll want to divvy up the work stations and get some mood lighting in your conference room, and work lights with natural light effects and task lighting strewn throughout. If you give zones to the office, you can touch on different kinds of lighting found in different places for demonstrations during a client meeting.
If you install smart controls for controlling zones, you will be set for any environment (filming, photos, ambient to controlthe feeling you want to get across.
For Today and Tomorrow
Since you are starting fresh, why not plan for the future as well as your needs now?
If you put options in strategic places, you will have so many options you won’t be able to stand it!
- Instead of organizing the office to suit the outlets, go one step forward and zone your outlets to suit the furniture layouts in the room. You can open things up to outlets in the ceiling, in the floor, and in the walls.
- How about plugs in each seat to allow for visiting laptops, phones, tablets, or expanding personal workspaces?
- Make your presentation wall electrified so monitors or projectors, or extra task lighting can be plugged in.
- The Outlets can be USB-C power delivery, so no bulky adapters are needed. These outlets can charge devices quickly and efficiently.
- For an area where the Ethernet is hard-wired, use an (RH45) Ethernet jack fed from your network panel.
- In-floor receptacles with hard, durable flush lids make everything look tidy and clean, especially in an open concept area.
- Installing data ports and maybe an AV connection in strategic areas would also be advantageous. Think of a self-sufficient power island (hub).
- Future-proof the office by installing a conduit sleeve or ‘chase’. These will allow additional cables to be added later for more tech cables to your strategic areas, like your conference room, your presentation board area, and possibly AV feeds or speakers that might hang someday. If you can put conduits in closets to reach ceilings for future planning, that is just resourceful.
Surge Protection
A whole-surge protector at the panels and an uninterrupted power supply (UPS) for critical hardware.
This is important for any design studio, regardless of where you are, but it’s ESPECIALLY important if the area where your physical studio is has frequent thunderstorms, because you don’t want a rogue lightning strike to fry all your expensive equipment. Plus, when it comes to computers, you don’t want your data damaged/erased due to damage.
Protection is number one.
But the second benefit is that if there’s a power outage, you get to continue working. Sure, power outages might not be THAT common (depending on where you live), but when they happen, you don’t want to be in a position where you don’t have access.
Or if you’re on a deadline, it won’t look professional to say, “Hey, I wasn’t able to finish the project because of the power outage.”
The Critical Role of a Licensed Professional
A system like this isn’t for the faint-hearted.
Unless you’re a licensed electrician, involve a professional early in your planning and keep one on call. A qualified electrician understands the necessary permits, ensures the work meets code, and provides insurable, reliable results.
Their expertise is maintained through mandatory continuing education (CE), and the mandatory requirements vary by state. Wyoming electrical continuing-education training programs keep electricians current on NEC changes, and each is required to renew their licence every 3 years, with a requirement of 16 hrs of CE.
In Texas, electricians must renew their license every year, which can be more demanding. However, this frequent renewal helps keep them up to date with new technology. The continuing education (CE) requirement is lower than in Wyoming just 4 hours because of the annual renewal cycle.
