We recently turned around a project of 100 student accommodation bedrooms in four weeks. Yes, really!
Every item of furniture in those rooms was vinyl wrapped: wardrobes, doors, shelves, desks – even the bed and bedside cabinet!
Student accommodation is consistently reused every year, which means that to upgrade a student accommodation, you may have a short time frame to complete the job.
Why Did This Bedroom Furniture Need Vinyl Wrapping?
The short answer is because it was the original beech veneered furniture of back in the day! Nobody chooses beech as a design in 2022, unless it’s being given away on Gumtree and you desperately need the item…
Gen Z doesn’t want beech (it’s sad but true). They want modern designs. New-look rooms. An air of luxury about their living space even when in student accommodation.
They aren’t going to be mugged off with a single bed, a communal bathroom and furniture that was manufactured before the Spice Girls came to fruition. Student accommodations are no longer dealing with the undemanding ways of Generation X, it’s time to change and learn some new tricks!
If you’re a student accommodation that wants to sell rooms, you’ll have to get with the times. Before reading this blog, you’ll think this comes with a hefty price tag, and you would be right if you want to rip out hundreds of bedrooms worth of furniture.
Now you’ve discovered vinyl wrapping for furniture and all your budget woes are over, time to celebrate.
Easy ideas for Student Accommodation Design
So, like we previously mentioned, we know that your customers (fussy Gen Z students) don’t want: beech.
We also know what 99% of student accommodations do have: beech.
So, what are the design options when vinyl wrapping student accommodation bedroom furniture? We are in 2022 and grey wood effects still don’t seem to be going anywhere for the time being.
Check out our case studyto see a grey wood Homes for Students chose for their refurbishment. We can offer you around 20 grey wood effects in various shades if that particular one doesn’t fit your vision. Or hundreds of other wood colours if the rise in popularity of grey has made you feel like you’re living in a black and white movie nowadays.
If you are particularly passionate about beech, we can even find you another beech effect to vinyl wrap your furniture with, but I would strongly suggest you didn’t.
What Can We Wrap?
In a nutshell, if you have a design in mind, a photograph from Pinterest or Google, we can find a very close match to almost anything! If you can think it, we can wrap it!
If you’re sold on the idea of vinyl wrapping by now, you might be wondering where you can use our product. Doors are a great place to start and we’ve wrapped hundreds all over the UK. Fire doors can also be vinyl wrapped and we can provide you with a fire-rated certificate of any product used. Stylish and safe, perfect to keep students (and their parents) happy.
You may remember that at the very beginning of this blog, I told you we had vinyl wrapped the desk, shelves, bed, wardrobe and bedside cabinet over in our latest student accommodation project.
All these areas are suitable for vinyl wrapping. Things that we will not vinyl wrap include any surfaces that are damaged beyond repair (think snapped in half and should be skipped), soft furnishings (this may sound obvious but we have been asked more than once) and floors (that’s a different kind of vinyl).
Student Accommodation is a Home Away from Home
More than once, I have referred to your customers as being a little pickier than their predecessors.
I’m not sure if Gen Z have higher expectations than their Millennial or Gen X counterparts because they have been raised in a world of social media influencers or if really, they’ve figured out that they want the best bang for their buck (we think the latter).
Student accommodations want to be competitive on what they are offering and not how much they are offering it for. If there are other student accommodation blocks up the road offering a fresh-looking space for a bit more money, they’ll go where the room gives them a better vibe.
We know this because the rooms we have just vinyl-wrapped sold out before we’d even finished the project. And the weekly rent was more expensive!
Ideally, you’d like to offer viewings to potential students where the rooms are inviting and modern. For many of these students, this is their first time living away from home and they want a space that they love to be in.
Vinyl wrapping can transform student accommodation bedrooms into a place that’s welcoming and importantly, sellable. The increase in price for the rooms means that the outlay you’ll spend on vinyl wrapping will be recouped very quickly.
Create New Designs Quickly
It took us four weeks to vinyl wrap 100 bedrooms of student accommodation furniture. As a rough guide, it takes one person one day to complete a room as shown in our case study.
Students could use the bedroom that night if you wanted them to. Choosing vinyl wrapping means that there is no mess, no smells to air out, no waiting for anything to set and no downtime on rooms. It’s a different story from removing each item of furniture, patch plastering, installing new furniture and needing to redecorate. This is the process that takes weeks and involves long lead times and a number of trades reliably working together without a hitch to stay on schedule.
By choosing vinyl wrapping for your student accommodation project, you are choosing to have your rooms completed on time. One product and one company to deal with. You are choosing to avoid the headache and huge price tag that comes with replacing furniture.
The saving on these 100 rooms alone amounted to tens of thousands and one thing we are passionate about at Fusion is customer satisfaction, meaning we don’t overrun on projects, we provide you with the highest quality vinyl wrapping and our quotes are realistic.
Although we will be completing another 200 rooms next summer, we take on projects all year round and as many students leave their accommodation by June, we have the capacity to take on another 200 for another client before September begins.
It could be you if you’re ready to wave goodbye to the beech by getting in touch now!
