4 low-budget small restaurant design ideas with high impact (2024)

Key takeaways

• Create a fresh ambiance with inexpensive lighting and art installations painted by local artists
• Updating floor plans will cost you nothing and could change the whole feel of your restaurant
• The scent of your restaurant is often overlooked but can advertise your product directly
  

Skip the article and turn takeaways into action by scheduling a call with our team.

Whether you’re creating a new restaurant from scratch or updating your current dining experience, interior design doesn’t have to break the bank. Low-budget small restaurant design is possible if you plan ahead and use some clever hacks.

Don’t feel that you are limited by your restaurant type either. From fast-food restaurants to coffee shops or even fine-dining restaurants, there are small restaurant design ideas that can transform any eatery on a budget.

In this article we list four decor ideas that will improve your restaurant’s ambiance, creating better dining experiences for your customers.

1. Contact local artists

For restaurant owners who aren’t interested in a minimalist look, this low-budget small restaurant design idea could give your restaurant interior design the wow factor you want. It’s also a great way to promote your restaurant and give back to your local community.

Reach out to local artists via social media. Instagram will probably yield the best results as most artists share their work on this image-based platform. Look for artists with a history of painting wall art who don’t have a huge following. Pick artists whose design, style, and typography you find engaging and reach out to them. Use a site like fiverr to find an artist that fits within your budget.

It’s a win-win for you and the artist. For example, a large mural that elevates your bar design can be shared on your respective social media accounts, promoting your restaurant and their business.

2. Update floor plans

Don’t panic, low-budget small restaurant design doesn’t involve bulk buying chandeliers to revive tired dining areas. The following idea is completely free and just involves a little pre-planning and manual labor.

Survey your dining room and consider its look and function. Is it a very small space? Where are your restrooms? Does your current floor plan allow easy access for front-of-house staff to bring food from your restaurant kitchen?

Answer these questions carefully, preferably with input from your front-of-house manager. Now you can update your floor plan on paper and then start to move tables and chairs around. A new layout could transform your restaurant space for zero dollars. Getting rid of a claustrophobic feel can help diners relax and enjoy themselves more.

While focusing on your tables, you may want to make some other changes. Are you happy with the layout of your tabletops? Think about condiment and cutlery placement, tablecloth design, and the type of napkins you source.

Remember to update your floor layout on any table management software you may use to avoid confusion among your staff when you open up following your redesign.

3. Consider scents

When thinking about quick and easy hacks for low-budget small restaurant design, social media bombards us with visual ideas. But the smell of your bistro plays a huge role in its success too.

Your guests are 100x more likely to remember a smell than any other sense. Scent marketing is a real thing—a passerby can be drawn to enter a bakery because of the aroma of freshly baked bread wafting into the street. A guest can be motivated to add coffee to their breakfast order once they smell it brewing. There’s good reason to plant those scents intentionally.

An open kitchen design is the ultimate way to advertise the smell of your restaurant’s food, but this is an expensive overhaul which involves shutting your restaurant down. Instead, consider using custom fragrances in your restaurant to create a mouthwatering aroma.

You can pick different scents for different areas, such as the lobby and dining area, to create an atmosphere that guests are lured into and don’t want to leave. Companies like ScentAir specifically design the aromatic experience at restaurants, but you can also DIY it with strategically placed diffusers in unseen places. This is also the perfect opportunity to update the scent system in the restrooms to improve the overall experience for your patrons.

4. Redesign lighting

Lighting is a vital part of low-budget small restaurant design. It is the finishing touch to all of your design efforts. You can highlight what you’re proud of and create moods for various dining areas. There are different types of lighting to consider before making changes.

Ambient lighting is important as it defines the feel of your restaurant. Fine-dining restaurants are often dimly lit, creating an intimate dining experience. The low light motivates diners to stay longer and order more food and drinks. Fast-food restaurants offer the opposite experience: bright lighting that inspires diners to eat quickly and move on.

Protect your FOH staff with task lighting. As the name suggests, this lighting is put in place for function. It lights up walkways helping staff get around safely and quickly. You can also use it to light tables, making it easier for diners to read menus.

Lastly, there’s accent lighting, commonly used in softly lit fine-dining restaurants. This type of lighting emphasizes objects by focusing light on them—maybe that new mural by a local artist. It’s sometimes used in bar design to illuminate expensive spirits. It’s a simple and cheap addition to your restaurant that can quickly add some extra class.

Redesigning doesn’t have to mean rewiring. Consider changing the lumens of different bulbs in your current lighting to adjust your restaurant’s brightness. You could even try colored bulbs or add shades to existing lights. Accent lighting doesn’t have to be expensive either. You can cleverly hide LED strip lights for striking yet economical object lighting.

Low-budget small restaurant design is possible for any restaurant type

It doesn’t matter if you run a Michelin-starred fine-dining restaurant or a humble coffee shop, not all redesigns have to be costly. Hopefully, this article has inspired you to start thinking right now about cheap (or even free) changes you can make.

When making low-budget small restaurant design changes, it helps to have top-notch technology to support your business. Take charge of your front-of-house management with Yelp Guest Manager. This software supports your team by handling reservations and waitlists, allowing customers to check themselves in, and so much more.

Restaurants that start using Guest Manager experience up to 2X the traffic on their Yelp Business Page.*

Get a demo to improve your front-of-house management today.

*Yelp Internal Data 2021. Based on average results from a sample study of restaurants that purchased Guest Manager for at least 90 days (in Q2-Q3 2021) versus the 90 days prior to making a purchase. Results may vary.

By: Thomas Board