Store gallery: A home from Haus in Farnborough

Back in the day, if you wanted to show your manly tech-savvy credentials, you might have opted to buy a Braun electric razor.

The fact that the word simply meant ‘Brown’ was by the by. What was signified was German technology, vorsprung durch technik, with its connotations of smooth efficiency and being at the cutting edge (as it were) without being flash.

Something of the kind might have informed the decision by Bathstore to name its new shop in Farnborough, Hampshire ‘haus store’, with a subtext that reads “Quality kitchens & bedrooms from Germany”.

This is a store that is about buying a piece of slick and highly functional Deutsche home design.

All of this can be seen on the large board above the entrance with the Bathstore logo surmounting all, in case there were any doubt that this is still a store where aspirational bathrooms are on offer.

The store is located on a retail park in the London/Surrey overspill that is greater Farnborough (your correspondent grew up in these parts) and at first glance it is an archetype of the sort of retail proposition found on the edge of towns across the country.

Outside and inside the haus

The board that bears the new logo sits above a canopy, which in turn provides a visual break between the upper part of the building and the windows and main door, at eye level.

So far, so normal – and to an extent, when the shopper stands poised on the threshold, there is a sense that this retail normality is confirmed by the shape of the interior.

A large atrium leads deeper into the ground floor, above which there is a mezzanine, accessed by a staircase set against the right-hand wall. Again, this is exactly what the shopper would expect of a unit on a retail park.

That said, it is relatively in tune with what is required of a store that seeks to sell domestic dreams. This is a ‘haus’ and as such it would be normal to expect the kitchen to be on the ground floor.

This proves to be the case, and in fact the whole of the ‘haus’, as opposed to Bathstore, part of this offer is on the ground floor.

“Champagne flutes, bottles of bubbly and copper-plated lightshades all contribute to the feel of a showhouse in which the hardware that is being sold is as much a part of the design as the tiles and parquet wood floors that surround them”

This means that a large number of kitchen roomsets fill the front and left-hand side of the ground floor with the deeper part of the shop, on the right-hand side beneath the mezzanine, being reserved for bedrooms.

(An exception is made for a bedroom roomset tucked in to the side of the staircase and acting as a taster for what lies beyond).

Equally, as might be expected of a store that sells kitchens, beds and baths that will run into thousands of pounds, every one of the rooms has been carefully accessorised.

Champagne flutes, bottles of bubbly and copper-plated lightshades all contribute to the feel of a showhome in which the hardware that is being sold is as much a part of the design as the tiles and parquet wood floors that surround them.

And for those prepared to spend on the scale required to shop this space, service has to form a major element.

On show

It takes just a few seconds to work out that ‘Expert ADVICE Expert DESIGN Expert FITTING’, as it says on a wall panel graphic, are on hand, to guide novices in the tricky business of choosing the right kitchen or bedroom for a particular house.

This is, in many ways, a showroom rather than a shop and this means that when a particular kitchen, bedroom or bathroom is selected, there are walls filled with sample finishes from which to select.

And in spite of the fact that virtual reality headsets can be used to help in the selection process, this is in many ways a quite old-fashioned, in a positive way, store.

“An edge-of-town store then that is illustrative of how a physical shop can still trump the web when it comes to equipping a home”

Upstairs, as is the case in most houses (hauser, surely), it’s bathrooms, and the whole of the mezzanine is devoted to the category.

Once more, help is at hand; Bathstore estimators will even visit a customer’s home to assess whether a particular bathroom will work in situ.

And like the ground floor, this is all about room sets that sell a very upscale version of domestic bliss. If money is a secondary consideration, this store has to be a destination for those in search of a new bathroom.

An edge-of-town store then that is illustrative of how a physical shop can still trump the web when it comes to equipping a home.

Nothing will quite beat looking at the shiny vignettes on show here and imagining something of the kind in your own house. Come armed with a pliable bank manager and/or deep pockets.