The commercial exterior of your business shapes how your customers, clients, tenants, and employees see your business before they even walk through the door. A business exterior that’s polished can help it feel more established, trustworthy, and even easy to find. But creating a commercial exterior design is more than just turning every building sleek and gray. After all, a local cafe shouldn’t look like a law office, and a medical practice shouldn’t look like a boutique hotel.
The goal of a commercial exterior is to bring your brand to life by creating an exterior that’s easily recognizable and right for your brand identity. So, what actually makes a commercial exterior look more professional? Start with these 7 design priorities.
1. Make the Main Entrance Easy to Identify
A professional commercial exterior should easily point your customers in the right direction. If someone pulls into the parking lot and has to scan the building for the front door, your exterior is already failing at its job.
A strong front entrance uses elements like:
- A contrasting paint or material
- An awning or canopy
- Architectural framing
- Larger or distinctive lighting
- Planters
- A defined walkway
- Prominent signage
- A change in roofline or façade depth
Your exterior should have a clear visual hierarchy. Your customer’s eye should naturally move toward the entrance, rather than away from it or toward 15 competing elements.
If your front door isn’t obvious, you may not need a major renovation. You may be able to change the color around the entry, update the door, or improve lighting to help it stand out more.
Our biggest designer tip? Before adding those nice decorative details, make sure people know how to get inside!
2. Make Sure Your Commercial Exterior Reflects Your Brand
Your building is a giant representation of your brand, so its architecture, color palette, signage, and landscaping should all demonstrate the personality your customers expect from you. Think about how you want your brand to make people feel. For example, a wellness practice may want on their exterior:
- Natural materials
- Softer colors
- Organic landscaping
- Warm lighting
While a contemporary restaurant may prefer:
- Darker colors
- Strong contrast
- Large windows
- Dramatic signage
- Architectural lighting
At brick&batten, our designers often use branding as a starting point for commercial projects, incorporating logo colors or related tones strategically instead of allowing the branding to compete with the architecture.
3. Create a Cohesive Commercial Exterior Color Palette
If you’re worried about your exterior deterring customers, the first mistake is to use too many unrelated colors. A professional palette usually combines:
- A primary body color
- A secondary material or color
- A trim color
- One or two accent colors
- Brand colors used strategically
You don’t necessarily need a neutral building, but you should only use bold colors when there’s a clear reason for it. A colorful door, sign, or other feature can create a nice branded focal point without overwhelming the entire exterior.
Before you choose any paint, you should also consider fixed elements like:
- Brick
- Stone
- Roofing
- Existing metal
- Window frames
- Concrete
- Permanent signage
These elements have undertones and colors that your new palette needs to be able to work with. Our human designers at brick&batten can help you create a strong palette that makes your fixed elements feel coordinated, rather than haphazardly stitched together.
4. Use Commercial Exterior Materials Carefully
Mixed materials can make your exterior feel more custom and visually interesting, but more materials don’t automatically equal better. It’s better to use a few materials intentionally than to just throw as many together as possible. Some potential materials you can use include:
- Brick
- Natural or manufactured stone
- Wood or wood-look siding
- Metal panels
- Stucco
- Fiber cement siding
- Concrete
- Architectural panels
For example, you could use stone to accent the lower portion of your building, but wood to define the entrance. Our designers have used many combinations of stone, wood, siding, and metals to create commercial exteriors that are dynamic without being too busy.
Additionally, these materials should be practical. Your commercial building needs to handle significant exposure to the elements and traffic, so any materials you pick should be durable enough to withstand this activity.
5. Choose Exterior Lighting That Looks Professional
Exterior lighting should make your property feel more welcoming after the sun goes down. Consider adding lighting around:
- Entrances
- Business signage
- Walkways
- Steps
- Architectural features
- Patios
- Parking areas
- Landscaping
From a design standpoint, lighting is incredibly important. It can help your entrance stand out as a focal point and can highlight some of your business’s best features, like beautiful masonry. It also helps with visibility and accessibility, so your customers and clients can access your building safely at all hours of the day.
And please, give the light fixtures and lighting temperature themselves some thought. Fixtures that are undersized, mismatched, or disconnected from the architecture can make even an otherwise polished façade feel unfinished.
6. Use Landscaping to Frame the Building, Not Hide It
Your commercial building should also have commercial landscaping. You don’t want the land around your building to swallow your address, block your sign, or cover half the windows, or else people might think you’ve gone out of business!
Professional landscape design may include elements like:
- Lower plantings beneath windows
- Taller plants at corners
- Repetition along long façades
- Defined garden beds
- Seasonal color near the entrance
- Planters that reinforce your brand aesthetic
- Trees positioned to create shade without obscuring key features
Keep in mind that scale matters, too. A massive commercial building with a few tiny shrubs scattered around may look unfinished, but a small business with too many giant bushes against the storefront windows can make it look neglected.
7. Don’t Forget Maintenance and Details People Really Notice
You may have picked the perfect paint color or installed gorgeous signage, but are you committed to maintaining all of it?
Look closely at the details of your building, including:
- Faded paint
- Damaged siding
- Deteriorating trim
- Dirty awnings
- Burned-out exterior lights
- Overgrown landscaping
- Cracked hardscaping
- Mismatched repairs
- Weathered signage
- Clutter around entrances
Maintenance, cleanliness, safety, signage, and lighting are all among the recurring considerations our pro designers identify when designing commercial exteriors. All these details tend to matter more than adding even more decorative features before you’ve resolved the issues.
Designer tip: Before asking, “What else can we add?” ask, “What already exists that needs to look better?” The answer to that question can not only save you money, but can also lead to a more refined design.
What Makes a Commercial Exterior Look Professional?
A professional commercial exterior typically combines five things:
Clarity: People can identify the business and entrance quickly.
Consistency: Colors, materials, signage, and landscaping feel connected.
Brand alignment: The exterior gives customers an accurate sense of the business inside.
Function: Customers can navigate the property comfortably.
Restraint: Every material, color, sign, light, and decorative feature has a reason to be there.
That last point is especially important. Professional design shouldn’t just be adding the most expensive materials you can find. It’s really just about editing the features that matter the most. At brick&batten, we focus on keeping what works and improving what doesn’t, whether that’s simplifying competing details or creating a stronger entrance. That’s how you start to make a real difference in your exterior.
How Does brick&batten Approach Commercial Exterior Design?
At brick&batten, we don’t believe a professional exterior automatically requires changing everything. We start with the building you already have.
That means evaluating:
- Architecture: What style and proportions are already established?
- Fixed elements: Which materials, windows, roofs, or other features are staying?
- Brand: What should customers understand or feel about the business?
- Focal point: Where should the eye go first?
- Color and materials: How can they create a more cohesive façade?
- Signage and lighting: Do they reinforce the design?
- Landscaping and hardscaping: Do they support the building?
- Overall experience: Does the finished exterior feel like the right introduction to the business?
Our commercial exterior designs incorporate exterior colors, materials, building names, signage, and logo concepts into a photorealistic rendering so business owners can visualize a more polished exterior before making permanent changes.
That visualization can be particularly helpful when several stakeholders need to agree on a direction or when you’re trying to understand whether a proposed material, color, or architectural feature actually works with the building.
Make Your Commercial Exterior Work Harder for Your Business
Your building is already communicating something. The question is whether it’s saying what you want it to say.
A thoughtful commercial exterior doesn’t need to be flashy or dramatically remodeled to feel more professional. Defined entrances, cohesive colors, better signage, intentional materials, landscaping, lighting, and a few carefully chosen updates can completely change how a property is perceived.
brick&batten’s exterior designers can help you bring those pieces together in a custom photorealistic design based on your actual commercial property. We’ll partner with you to develop a vision that reflects your brand while making the most of the building you already have.
Get started with your commercial exterior design and see what the right changes could do for your business, or start with a free 15-minute consultation with a member of our team to talk through your ideas.
Commercial Exterior Design FAQs
What is commercial exterior design?
Commercial exterior design is the process of planning the visible exterior elements of a business property, including colors, materials, signage, lighting, landscaping, entrances, and architectural details. The goal is to create a building that is attractive, functional, recognizable, and aligned with the business’s brand.
How can I make my commercial exterior look more professional?
Start by defining the entrance, simplifying the color palette, improving signage, updating exterior lighting, maintaining landscaping, and creating consistency among materials and finishes. Fixing neglected or mismatched details can sometimes make as much difference as adding new features.
What colors work best for commercial buildings?
There is no single best commercial color palette. The right colors depend on your architecture, existing materials, surrounding environment, and brand. Many businesses use a restrained primary palette with brand colors added strategically through signage, doors, awnings, or other accents.
Should my commercial exterior match my brand colors?
Your commercial exterior should relate to your brand, but that doesn’t mean covering the entire façade in logo colors. Brand colors often work best as intentional accents combined with complementary neutrals and materials that support the building’s architecture.
Can landscaping make a commercial building look more professional?
Yes, landscaping can make a commercial building look more professional. Well-scaled landscaping can frame the building, define entrances, soften large façades, and make the property feel better maintained. The key is keeping landscaping proportional to the architecture and preventing it from obstructing entrances, signage, windows, or important sightlines.
Do I need to completely renovate my building to improve its commercial exterior?
No, you don’t necessarily need to completely renovate your building to improve its exterior. Some commercial properties can make a major visual improvement through targeted changes such as new paint, updated signage, better lighting, refreshed landscaping, doors, awnings, or selective material updates. Good exterior design is often as much about knowing what to keep as knowing what to change.
Can brick&batten design commercial building exteriors?
Yes, brick&batten offers virtual exterior design for commercial properties and can help visualize elements such as colors, materials, signage, logos, landscaping, and other exterior updates in a photorealistic design based on the actual building.
