Boutique & Personal Training Studios

A boutique studio is a different business from a club. Members pay for coaching or for an environment, sessions are booked, floor area is small, and the equipment list is often the reason someone chose the studio over a large gym down the road.

The layout problem

In 150 to 250 square metres you are trying to fit a strength offering, a conditioning offering and a coaching area. The mistake is to buy a bit of everything and end up with a floor that is good at nothing.

We recommend choosing a spine and building around it. A strength-led studio wants two to four rack positions, a proper plate inventory, a cable station and heavy dumbbells. A conditioning-led studio wants a multi-bay rig, rowers or air bikes and open mat space. Decide which of the two you are, then let the other zone support it rather than compete with it.

Specification that matters in a small room

Three items are worth paying for in a studio and one is worth skipping.

Pay for: proper cable stations, because a studio runs its coaching programme through them; a level, well-installed floor, because members train barefoot or in socks and will notice every seam; and heavy dumbbells up to 50 kg, because a studio attracts members who have outgrown a commercial floor.

Skip the multi-station machine. It reads as value on a quote and becomes a monument on a small floor, because a coach can only take one member through it at a time.

Branding and atmosphere

A studio is one of the few applications where we recommend full private-label treatment: your logo on the frame plates, upholstery tags, custom frame colour and matching dumbbell heads. It is not vanity — members photograph the room, and equipment that looks like nobody else's is the cheapest marketing a studio owns.

Lighting, mirrors and storage should be part of the same brief as the equipment. A studio floor with the right machines and the wrong lighting still looks unfinished.