Next opened its first standalone Home store in London this week, a 15,000 sq ft (1,395 sq m) outlet on the site of failed entertainment retailer Fopp’s flagship on Tottenham Court Road.

Covering the ground floor and basement, the branch took eight weeks to fit out, is the first town centre Next Home and is a move on from the two other standalone Home stores at Lakeside and Braehead in Glasgow.

A spokeswoman said that Next’s in-house creative team has taken elements of the design first put together by Dalziel + Pow and Platform Design for the Lakeside pilot and added a number of features.

Among these new elements are the beauty department in the basement and the use of colour in the monochrome silhouette-style graphics that were a central part of the original blueprint.

The ground floor has dining and accessories at the front, and bedrooms and a children’s area at the rear, where a secondary entrance allows shoppers to enter.

Downstairs are the beauty, lighting, bathroom and kitchen departments. As well as the wallpaper applied to the mid-floor fixturing, grey, white and black tiled areas are used to demarcate individual areas.

Converting the Fopp store involved ridding it of the equivalent of three 40 sq yd skips of CD covers before work could begin.

Topics