Veterinary practice design and layout can significantly influence the success of your business. With this in mind, here are four key areas you should consider when designing your veterinary practice.
When done effectively, design and layout can reinforce your branding efforts, modernize your space, reduce stress, and help your clients feel more comfortable. Some veterinary hospitals report that renovating their practice and incorporating new technologies have led to as much as a 20% increase in revenue. Good veterinary practice design is more than just a ‘nice feature’ but a core factor in your ability to manage your veterinary clinic and generate the best results for your business.
1. Design your floor plan carefully
The layout of your veterinary clinic will make a big difference to the efficiency of your practice, your ability to generate a profit, and how your clients and staff feel within the space. Therefore, ensure that your floor plan provides exactly what you want it to. Ask yourself questions such as the following to help you generate veterinary clinic layout ideas:
- How can we improve the pet and owner experience?
- Do we need to upgrade the facilities or add new treatment rooms?
- Do you currently have any issues regarding available space, accessibility, or layout?
- Do we have at least 150 square feet of floor space per treatment station?
- Can staff and clients move around freely? Do they have to walk through rooms to access others?
- Do staff members like or dislike anything about the existing layout?
You can then use this information to upgrade your veterinary practice layout, bearing in mind that you don’t need to blow the budget to make improvements. Although there will be times when knocking down walls and building extensions are the only choices, you can achieve a great deal with small tweaks such as switching existing rooms or rearranging furniture.
2. Optimize the color scheme
Although the color you choose to paint the walls of your veterinary clinic walls won’t directly affect how effective you are as a veterinary surgeon, it can make a surprising difference to your business as a whole.
Get it right and you can help both owners and pets feel much less stressed, improve productivity, stamp your branding throughout the space, and provide a warm welcome to your customers. It’s also a very quick and affordable way to refresh the space.
When it comes to choosing which colors to use, don’t feel like you have to stick to muted neutrals. Using bright, vibrant colors can be a great way to create a bold, modern look and add character to the space. As DVM360 advises, “…for most projects, a color scheme that’s well-coordinated and unified matters more than anything else.”
If you already have brand colors, use these, or look for shades that coordinate well. However, do bear in mind the widespread industry ‘warning’ regarding veterinary practice color schemes– avoid using minty green.
