Common areas in a residential complex: how lobbies, halls and corridors are designed

In a finished building, a buyer walks through the entrance area, the lobby, the lift hall and the corridor before ever opening the door to their apartment. These spaces shape the first impression of the building and are part of what buyers judge it on — industry ratings of new developments assess them as a separate group of parameters.

That's why, for a developer, common areas aren't finishing done with whatever budget is left over: they are part of the product, the brand and the building's future upkeep. We look at three of our own projects: a scheme for FORMULA Stroitelstva (550 m², FORMULA Stroitelstva), one for BAZA Development (90 m², BAZA Development) and one for YIT (585 m², YIT).

What counts as common areas in a residential complex

In design practice, common areas usually mean the interior communal spaces: entrance vestibules and entrance areas, lobbies, lift and stair halls, communal corridors, pram stores, post areas, waiting areas, co-working spaces, toilets, pet-washing stations and the links to the car park.

Legally, common property is broader. The Housing Code counts as common property, among other things, staircases, lifts and their shafts, technical floors and basements, engineering equipment and other parts of the building that serve more than one unit. What follows is specifically about the interior part that goes into a design project.

There are more zones than you'd think

In conversation, ‘common areas’ means the lobby and the corridor. In an actual project there are always more of them, and each needs its own solution. On the FORMULA Stroitelstva project these are the entrance areas, the lift halls, the inter-apartment corridors, the pram storage room, a toilet, a pet-washing station, mailboxes with wayfinding, and a co-working space. On the BAZA Development project there are seven functional zones, including the car park.

A pet-washing station and a pram storage room don't do much for a sales presentation, but they're exactly what shows a buyer that the building was designed around their everyday life, not around a render for a brochure.

A design code for the whole complex: from façade to car park

The main mistake is designing each zone separately. Then the lobby ends up looking impressive, the corridor generic, and the car park like whatever was left over. A buyer walks through all of them in sequence and notices the disconnect.

A design code shouldn't stop at the front door, and it shouldn't exist separately from the façade and the landscaping. On the YIT project, a single character carries through from the main lobby all the way to the underground car park: a monochrome palette, porcelain stoneware and brass tie every level together, and the car park's entrance areas are treated as part of the building's public face — while the overall look continues the neo-classical façades of the complex.

On the FORMULA Stroitelstva project, the same role is played by wood-look slats, soft lighting and terracotta accents: they repeat across all the common areas and make the development recognisable from the inside.

Common area design starts with the product, not the brand book

A brand book sets the colours, typography and visual constraints, but it doesn't answer the question of what the building should actually be. That's determined by the complex's positioning, its class, the architecture, the target audience, how people live there, and the service model — while the budget sets the frame of what's possible.

In this chain, the brand book is an input, not an obstacle. On the YIT project the brief was twofold: continue the look of the façades and stay within the developer's corporate identity. Plus keep the monochrome scheme feeling refined rather than cold — a matter of texture and light, not colour.

Wayfinding is part of the interior, not signage bolted on after construction

If wayfinding is added after the finishing work, it almost always looks stuck on top of the interior. When it's designed alongside the common areas, the floor number, the range of apartment numbers, the mail zone and the direction to the car park become part of the design code instead of fighting it.

The task becomes noticeably harder than signage when there are several buildings: the route from the street to the apartment runs through the courtyard, the entrance area, the lift hall, the floor and the section, and at every junction a person needs to understand where to go. On the FORMULA Stroitelstva project, wayfinding was issued as a separate section of the design project, together with the mailboxes and the graphics.

Light works for both image and everyday use

Each zone has its own task. In the entrance area, light shapes the first impression; with good glazing, natural light adds to the artificial lighting. In the lobby, light works both architecturally and decoratively. In corridors and on typical floors, evenness matters more: it creates a sense of safety and helps people find their way. In the car park, light is primarily about how legible the route is.

Cutting corners on lighting quickly turns into an operational problem: a resident sees a dark corridor every single day, but a decorative chandelier in the lobby only for a few seconds.

Materials are chosen with everyday use in mind

A residential complex's common areas operate around the clock, every day of the year. The finishes take the wheels of prams and bikes, bags, dogs' paws and dirt tracked in from the street. Operational requirements constrain the choice of materials just as much as the budget does.

Several properties are checked at once:

• Abrasion resistance. A constant flow of residents and guests.
• Impact resistance. Bikes, prams, deliveries, furniture during a move.
• Wet cleaning. Daily, using household cleaning products.
• Dirt resistance. Entrance areas meet the street first.
• Repairability. Localised damage is inevitable; what matters is being able to repair a section, not the whole zone.
• Material availability. Replacement three to five years down the line needs to be possible.
• Fire performance. Some common areas are evacuation routes, where the choice of finish is restricted.
• Access to building services. An attractive finish shouldn't block access to what needs servicing.

On the BAZA Development project, the requirement was stated directly: keep a single, recognisable character across all seven zones, while keeping the finishes durable and the upkeep practical.

Regulations shape the design before aesthetics do

The entrance area, the lift hall and the inter-apartment corridor aren't just interior spaces. Evacuation routes run through them, and accessibility and fire-safety requirements apply. That's why the width of the passages, the direction doors open, the finishing materials and the placement of equipment are all checked before a visualisation is ever signed off.

The specific codes depend on the country, but the same groups of rules always apply: residential building regulations, accessibility standards and the rules for evacuation routes. Fire-safety regulations also restrict decorative finishes on escape routes: the requirements differ for entrance lobbies, stairwells, lift halls and corridors, and usually depend on the height of the building as well.

The division of responsibility is clear here: the designer aligns the interior with these requirements, but the fire-safety calculations, the building services sections and the structural design are carried out by specialist engineers.

How the budget is split between the lobby and the typical zones

Not every square metre of common area needs to cost the same. A grand lobby does more for a building's image than the eighteenth identical inter-apartment corridor. The task isn't to make everything costly, but to find the places where investment in the interior is most visible, and build a repeatable system for the typical zones.

• Lobby. Individual elements, one-off solutions, distinctive lighting.
• The lift portal. One expressive detail that repeats on every floor and creates a recognisable code without needing a separate solution for each hall.
• Typical floors. Repeatable materials and details, designed to be replicated at scale.
• Car park. Graphics, colour and wayfinding instead of costly decor.

This way the product's class is preserved, and costly individual solutions are concentrated where they're most visible, while the typical zones are designed as a repeatable system.

Three projects, three briefs

The answers differ not because of differing taste but because the starting conditions differ:

What common area design gives a developer

The main point

Common areas are part of the product, not a final coat of finish. They start with the complex's positioning, run through the design code, wayfinding, light and materials, and end with the documentation needed to actually build and later maintain them.

What's next

The scope of work and the price are on the service page ‘Common area design’. Broader formats for business are covered under public interior design. The full projects: the FORMULA Stroitelstva project, the BAZA Development project and the YIT project.