Beyond the Office: What Designing Gyms Has Taught Us About Space

Six months, four projects, and a few lessons worth sharing

We are, at our core, workplace specialists. Cat A and Cat B office fit-outs are our world. But the workplace moves in cycles, and with it, the brief naturally shifts. That is one of the things that keeps this industry alive for us: the crossover. With different businesses, industries, individuals and design principles. The moment you stop learning from adjacent fields is the moment the work gets stale.

The most prominent trend we have seen in the last six months has been gyms and wellness spaces, driven largely by building owners, asset managers and owner occupiers looking to add genuine amenity value to their schemes. In that time, we have been appointed on four projects that include gyms and recovery stations. This is, in our view, a good trend and one worth writing about.

Designing a gym has always sat on the bucket list. Exercise has been a constant in our world  sometimes more consistently than others and the idea that the built environment of a gym might directly influence how hard and how long someone trains is genuinely fascinating. Walk into a boxing gym where the floor is caving in, and there is something raw and motivating about it. Walk into a private members club where the machines match the veneer panelling, and there is a different kind of commitment on show. Both have merit. Which one pushes you harder? That question has been sitting with us throughout these projects.

Here is what we have learnt.

• Lighting

Lighting in a gym is not a nice-to-have  it is fundamental. The mood, atmosphere and ambience of a training space hit your psyche the moment you walk in. A standard working light level, perfectly appropriate for an open-plan office, simply does not create the right conditions for focused physical effort.

The gym has increasingly become a form of escapism. People are not just there to exercise; they are there to decompress, to focus, to be somewhere that is not a screen. Getting the lighting right  and investing a little more to do so  is paramount. Zonal control, dimming capability, warmer tones in recovery areas and sharper, cooler light over functional training zones all contribute to a space that genuinely works for its users.

• Journey

A gym is a social space. It is also a space where people carve out their own boundaries, their own rituals, their own concentration. Designing for both of those realities simultaneously takes care.

The user journey needs to flow naturally and logically: arrival, changing, warm-up, training, recovery, exit. Toilets and changing areas should not sit in the middle of the training floor. Warm-up zones should sit between the entrance and the main equipment. Recovery stations belong at the back. Where these elements are placed determines how much unwanted traffic crosses the floor, and that traffic has a direct impact on how focused the space feels.

A well-planned journey means the space works for the staff running it, the tenants or members using it, and everyone moves through it without friction.

• Variety

In a commercial building with several hundred occupants, you are catering for people at radically different points in their fitness lives. Some will want cardio machines. Some want to lift heavy. Some want functional movement space. Some are rehabilitating injuries. Designing for the average user means designing for no one in particular.

Where space allows, a good mix of cardio equipment, dumbbells, an Olympic station and calisthenics options will cover the majority of what people actually need. Where space is constrained  and it often is we have found that deprioritising machines in favour of free weights and open floor space tends to serve more people better. Dumbbells and benches are remarkably versatile. A bank of treadmills is not.

• Fire and Life Safety

This one matters as much here as it does in the office and it can catch people out. Gyms carry their own fire regulations, life safety strategies and escape route requirements that must be respected and integrated into the design from day one, not bolted on at the end.

Maximum occupancy, escape routes, fire lobbies, emergency lighting and signage all need to be considered at every stage of the design process. Equipment placement, the location of heavy machinery, and the configuration of changing and recovery areas all interact with life safety requirements in ways that can create significant design constraints if left too late. The earlier these considerations are embedded, the better the outcome.

• Inclusivity and Decor

These two considerations are more closely linked than they might initially appear. A gym that looks stunning but is difficult to navigate for someone with a visual impairment, or overwhelming for someone who is neurodiverse, has failed at a fundamental level regardless of how good the photography is.

Legible, clear signage typography matters. Contrasting flooring to guide those with sight impairments matters. Patterns and visual complexity need to be considered in the context of neurodiversity not avoided entirely, but applied with awareness. These decisions sit alongside purely aesthetic choices and need to be made together, not in sequence.

A gym that works for everyone tends to be a gym that looks better for it too. Restraint and clarity in design language rarely make a space less interesting.

A Final Thought

The lessons learned from these gym projects have fed directly back into how we think about workplace design. The relationship between environment and performance, the importance of journey and flow, the discipline required to design inclusively without compromising on quality these are not gym-specific problems. They are design problems. The crossover is the point.

If you are considering adding a gym or wellness space to your building or occupier brief, we would be happy to talk it through. These projects have been among the most interesting work we have done this year, and we are actively looking for more of them.