The Bar Room

Bar rooms have undergone a big change throughout the years. What was once a dark room with a mirror backsplash is now a modernized, and more often than not themed, entertaining hub of the home.

If having an updated bar room where you can enjoy a few drinks with your friends and family sounds like a dream come true, read on. In this article, we’ll give you all the tips and tricks so you can tackle designing the bar room on your own.

We’ll discuss basic design elements for bar rooms, the shelving system, and the materials you can use for the cabinets, countertops, and shelves, and give you more tips on how to design your ideal bar room. Let’s get to it.

Important Aspects of Bar Room Design

Before you start designing your ideal bar room, there are some things you need to consider, such as the location, type, and style of the bar.

Location

The location will define the overall vibe of your new bar, so it’s a good idea to think about that aspect first. The ideal location will depend on the layout of your home as well as your personal preference.

You can add the bar as an extension to the kitchen, find it a corner in the living room, place it near your pool or fire pit, designate a room or your basement as a bar room, or find another suitable place for it, like the backyard. Just don’t place it in a distant corner of your home to avoid carrying drinks across the house.

Types of Bars

The bar can be as small or big as you choose, ranging from a minibar to a huge bar with high chairs. Generally, bars fall into one of these two categories:

• Free-standing bars (great if you have a smaller budget or don’t have a lot of space in your room)
• Built-in bars (great if you entertain a lot and want to have an elaborate bar where multiple people can sit and enjoy drinks)

The Style of Your Bar

The style of the bar will largely depend on how you plan to use it and your house’s overall style so it blends in nicely. It can be more traditional with natural wood, more modern and neutral, or even themed - that’s completely up to you!

Depending on how you plan to use the bar, you can choose to have a tap for draught beer if you’re a beer lover, a wine cooler if you’re a wine connoisseur, or a wide variety of liqueurs if you’re keen on making cocktails.

Key Design Elements for Your Bar Room

To make a functional and unique bar room, you’ll need to make sure that the bar has the following elements:

• Plumbing
• Electricity access
• Adequate workspace
• Storage
• Decor

Plumbing

It’s a good idea to have a sink in your bar, especially if you’re designing an outdoor bar. The sink will be useful for dumping ice, washing glasses, and filling a glass of water anytime you want. If you don’t have a sink in your bar, you’ll need to bring all your dirty glasses to the kitchen, and if the bar isn’t nearby, you’ll need to carry dirty glasses across your house, which can be a hassle.

Even if you design the bar and make it yourself, we advise you to hire a professional to do the plumbing for you. They’ll know which is the most optimal way to connect all the pipes and drain lines and how to connect to the main plumbing and sewage system in your home.

Electricity Access

Electricity access is essential in a bar room for a number of reasons:

• Connecting electrical appliances, such as the wine cooler, coffee maker, blender, refrigerator, and so on.
• Adding additional lights and making your bar even cozier.
• Having an outlet to charge your phone, plug in speakers, or other appliances.

Access to electricity and plumbing is important to consider while choosing a location for your bar. However, if you aren’t a professional electrician, we suggest you hire one for this step as they’ll have the required expertise to connect all the wiring and light fixtures.

Adequate Workspace

The next important element of the bar is the workspace where you’ll prepare the drinks, snacks, and place trays or boards with food or drinks. This usable workspace in a bar is often the countertop that’s at the height of standard kitchens, about 90 cm. In previous articles, we’ve also talked about different countertop materials and surfaces for bar areas, so give them a read if the topic interests you.

Storage

If you’re fully invested in making an elaborate bar, you’ll need plenty of storage for different utensils, glasses, small appliances, and bottles. So, let’s see how you can plan that storage.

We’ve divided the storage options into 5 categories:

• Open shelving - used for arranging glassware, bottles, or decorations. Open shelves are quite common for a lot of bars and are usually made of materials such as glass, metal, wood, or even more unique materials such as onyx, marble, granite, and so on.
• Storage for glasses - a bar room contains a lot of different glasses, so you’ll need designated cupboards and cabinets to store all your glassware. It’s best that most of your glasses are stored behind cabinet doors to minimize dust.
• Storage for bottles - this is the main thing you’ll want to store in your bar. Opt for horizontal storage when it comes to wine bottles, while the rest can be placed in open cabinets, so you know what type of alcohol you have on hand.
• Storage with temperature control - this can refer to the wine coolers, kegerators, beverage fridges, and other types of beverages that need to be stored at a cooler temperature.
• Storage for miscellaneous items and tools - this is the place where you’ll store the mixers, blenders, empty ice cube trays, recipe books, bottle openers, wine corkscrews, cutting boards, knives, shakers, ice buckets, and so on.

Tips and Tricks for Bar Room Design

Now that we reviewed the essentials that go into bar rooms, let’s give you some important tips that’ll help you design your ideal bar or bar room:

• If you’re confident in your DIY skills, make the bar yourself, otherwise, consult an architect or an interior designer.
• Choose durable materials for your bar, especially when it comes to the countertops since they’re prone to spills, so they’ll come in contact with different types of liquids, some of which can damage certain materials more than others.
• Put your own print on the whole design. Either make the bar room cohesive with the rest of your home or choose the style and design so it stands out.
• Use accents to make the bar special. You can do this by incorporating vibrant colors, adding brass or metal accents, interesting decorations, unique materials, and so on.
• Utilize all the space and think about where and how you would store glasses, bottles, appliances, and so on, even before you make the final design for the bar.
• The bar room should be a combination of empty and full spaces. For example, you may want to add closed cabinets at the bottom, but you can add open shelving at the top, or even cabinets with glass doors so you can see what’s stored inside.
• Draw inspiration for the bar room from your interests. If you’re a sports fan, make the bar room sports-themed, if you’re a fan of reading, convert the bar to a historic bar inspired by your favorite book, and so on.

Final Thoughts

Proper design and a unique approach will make your bar room a space that everyone admires. For a well-designed bar, take into consideration all of the key elements that we’ve talked about in this article and implement all that you’ve learned.

And finally, don’t forget to have fun during this process. The bar room will be a space where you can relax and forget about your worries, and have fun with your friends, so the design and construction process should reflect this. We hope that your creative juices start flowing as you start working on this unique space in your home.