DEATH TO THE BLACK BOX GYM
Courtesy Hume Los Angeles
By Jessica Salter
5 Minute Read
Gyms have traditionally been gritty and masculine, but design-led workout spaces that transform the experience can also upgrade your confidence.
Imagine a gym—any gym. The chances are you’ll picture a place that’s gritty and masculine: a black-box space with low ceilings, harsh lighting, big black machinery, and cleanliness level that leaves a lot to be desired. Gyms have forever been designed like a bat cave for building our bodies, and the only place you might spot colour is on the bright workout gear for women and a weight plate.
That was, until recently. A design-led movement is happening among our workout spaces, where the most considered gyms—in hotels, members' clubs and private homes—are beginning to look less like sweat boxes and more like sanctuaries. “The gym used to be the room nobody thought about, but that is changing fast,” says Kas Bordier, founder of MAVI, the Longevity Architecture Practice, which works across residential and commercial projects in New York, London and Dubai. “The home gym is becoming one of the most requested spaces in luxury residential design.”
Indeed. Jeff Goldblum’s at-home gym in his Old Hollywood guesthouse was so stunningly disruptive that it was featured in Architectural Digest. Designed by Harley Pasternak under the guidance of interior architect Barbara Bestor, the gym features pale pink mirrors with pale pink gym equipment, offset by a maroon rubber flooring. It looks like the type of space Margot Robbie’s Barbie would have appreciated in her Dreamhouse.
Jeff Goldblum’s pink workout palace, designed by Harley Pasternak
Pasternak isn’t the only fan of non-black gym equipment. Italian brand Technogym recently unveiled a sand-coloured gym collection that was unveiled at Milan Design Week; other brands on the schedule included Hermès and Loro Piana. If it sounds like a random appearance, it’s not: health and wellness now commands a $6.8 trillion market, according to the Global Wellness Institute, and as fitness filters into all aspects of our lives, the most design-literate brands, from hospitality to fashion to architecture, all want a piece of it.
There’s a benefit in this out-of-box thinking hitting gym aesthetics. Gymtimidation is real, and women feel more comfortable—and confident—in spaces that don’t reek of masculinity. Bordier uses natural materials, colours, plants and art when designing gyms. She considers everything from the acoustics to the view, the scent and the air quality as “part of the nervous system of the room… Women notice the difference immediately.”
Courtesy RNGD and Soho House, both in London
This is an ethos and aesthetic that Kelly Wearstler channeled when she gave the original gym at The Santa Monica Proper a serious redesign. A designer who has created homes for celebrities including Gwen Stefani and Cameron Diaz, Wearstler collaborated with fitness design consultancy SPX to build a 2,700-square-foot gym with a dedicated Pilates studio, bespoke free-weight racks and custom rigs.
The details include diamond cross-stitched black leather upholstery, clear-coated steel finishes, organic materials and raw stone—and they run as a continuous thread from the hotel's wider coastal-modern aesthetic. "It used to be a very small, dark space, but after the redesign it's got such a beautiful feminine energy," says Aylin Pashaian, 40, a yoga teacher based in Venice Beach, LA, who uses the gym. "It's soft and subtle and the colors are beautiful." So fundamental is the gym environment to the vacation experience that it’s become a selling point for guests when choosing where to stay.
The Proper isn't alone. The Soho House Group has made its gyms a natural extension of each property's identity. At Soho Warehouse in downtown Los Angeles, the space spans two floors with a functional turf training area, a boxing rig for group classes and luxury recovery amenities including steam rooms and saunas. The group's Chicago gym, meanwhile, leans into the building's history as an early 20th century belting factory: it’s an industrial loft aesthetic brought to life with custom leather boxing equipment. "Our gyms are an extension of the club spaces," says Domhnall Nolan, lead designer at the Soho House design team. "We want the functionality and aesthetic of our gyms to elevate the member's experience.”
Heimat in Los Angeles
The gym at Surrenne Belgravia in London—which hosts Tracey Anderson's only UK studio—is another to write home about. Oatmeal-colored carpet, wood-paneled walls hung with art, a Japanese-inspired ceiling and branded weights with a wooden trim make it feel less like a gym and more like a drawing room. The studio is bathed in a subtle pink glow; the changing rooms feature vast marble sinks, individual round mirrors, Dyson hair dryers and luxury products throughout. It’s feminine without losing any of the functionality required in the gym. "It is our responsibility to create environments that make wellness possible, without feeling prescriptive or clinical," says Hattie David-Wilkinson, global head of wellness and longevity at the Maybourne Group.
Nature is doing a lot of the heavy lifting in other spaces. At Palm Heights on Grand Cayman's Seven Mile Beach, Gabriella Khalil conceived the wellness area as an open-air space modeled on garden design, with an indoor-outdoor gym elevated with marble accents. Khalil was among the first hoteliers to recognize the forthcoming shift within fitness, and Palm Heights was the first to make the gym a considered part of the guest experience. Over in Somerset, England, The Newt's glass-fronted gym positions its cardio machines so that members can gaze out over the walled vegetable garden, watching staff water and harvest the plants destined for that evening's supper.
Beautiful gyms can unlock your confidence
Courtesy Palm Heights in the Grand Cayman
Women who train feel this intuitively: the space you work out in matters as much as your program. "Ugly gyms are my biggest pet peeve," Bordier says. "And I say that as both an expert in this field and as a woman who has trained in a lot of them. I walked into a hotel gym recently and the fluorescent lighting alone made me want to leave before I had even put my bag down."
The reasons run deeper than personal taste. "Gyms were historically designed for men," Bordier says. "They were built around a male body, a male schedule, and a male idea of performance with long rows of heavy weights, mirrors everywhere, harsh overhead lighting, no privacy, and no attention to what it feels like to be watched or to move through the space.” The consequence is felt immediately and physiologically. "When a space was not designed for you, you cannot fully relax. And when your nervous system does not feel safe, you do not perform as well—and you do not go back."
It’s a sentiment backed up by multiple studies comparing different exercise environments that have found that training in aesthetically curated or nature-based settings increases reported happiness immediately afterwards. Meanwhile a recent white paper report by Total Fitness found that after surveying nearly 6,000 gym-goers found that women were particularly sensitive to a gym’s environment. These design choices are “the difference between a space that supports them and one that works against them,” says Bordier. “We should all be demanding better, because it is entirely possible.”
Simply put: perform in a space that feels good, and you feel better. "It's like putting on beautiful workout clothes," says Pashaian, who has a background in graphic design. "When you step into a space that's beautifully designed, it can motivate and inspire you to work harder."
