Aqua Beauty ClinicSkin clinic fit-out design · Hurstville, Burwood, Parramatta

Aqua is a facial and skin treatment franchise, and it needed several clinics across Sydney that customers would recognise as Aqua the moment they walked in. Its signature soft green, a fresh, calming colour, had to become the thread connecting every location.

No two sites were alike. Each tenancy came with a different shopfront, layout and existing condition. And green used on its own can feel cold or overly clinical, which is the opposite of what a skin clinic wants.

We paired the green with warmth: timber, soft lighting, champagne-gold details, curved forms and carefully placed greenery, so the clinics feel warm, welcoming and lush.

The design adapted from site to site while the brand held steady. The same material and colour language runs through the illuminated signage, reception, product displays, waiting areas and the transitions into the treatment rooms at every location. At reception, that means a fluted white desk under an illuminated champagne-gold sign on a soft-green wall; in the waiting area, backlit shelves of skincare products.

Customers recognise the Aqua experience at whichever clinic they visit.

A multi-site clinic is two projects at once: a brand system that repeats, and a set of tenancies that don't.

Define the brand system early: the palette, signature materials, signage, reception and display pieces, and how they adapt to a narrow shopfront or a corner site. With that in place, each new site is mostly a layout problem.

The rules repeat site by site. If the treatments penetrate the skin, NSW Health says the business must register with its local council before it starts, so clinics in three council areas mean three registrations, each through that council's own process. The fit-out rules are the same everywhere: a hand basin used only for hand washing, which NSW Health recommends placing as near as possible to the treatment rooms; a separate sink for cleaning equipment; a reprocessing area for cleaning and sterilising reusable instruments, planned to minimise contamination; and surfaces that can be cleaned easily and properly.

So does planning. Each tenancy's existing consent decides whether the clinic can move in as it is or needs an application. The City of Sydney, for one, warns that operating a skin penetration business without development consent is an offence.

We recommend fixing the brand pieces in one specification, then budgeting the services, such as plumbing, for each site separately. The finishes and signage can repeat from site to site, while the plumbing depends on what each tenancy already has.