Designing and planning a gowning room can be complicated, as there is so much to fit into a small area. Hygiene standards must be upheld, and the area must be able to handle a fast flow of workers. We work with many food, beverage and pharmaceutical manufacturers to create gowning rooms to suit their needs. Take a look at our 6 tips to maximise hygiene and efficiency in your gowning room design.

Particular sub-sectors within the food, beverage and pharmaceutical manufacturing industry have higher hygiene requirements than others. As well as that, various companies have different standards they must uphold, particularly if they are supplying an international restaurant chain or nationally recognised supermarket.
Before designing a gowning room, ensure you understand the specific hygiene requirements your facility must uphold.

Entrance into a gowning room (the pre-gowning area) would typically be the most unhygienic area of the room. There needs to be a defined space between the pre-gowning area, and the gowning area. To minimise the risk of bacteria growth or cross contamination, a shoe/boot wash machine ideally needs to be located at the entrance of the room. While the workers would have on their personal shoes/boots, it ensures minimal bacteria or debris will be carried through to the clean gowning area.

Then prior to entering the gowning area, shoes need to be placed in a shoe storage cabinet.
Ideally, a boot rack would be next to the shoe storage, at the entrance of the gowning area. Boots are placed on, then the worker would move to the sanitisation area, where they would wash and sanitise their hands. They would then place gowning overalls, hairnet and beard nets on, ensuring all hair is covered.

As employees will typically go through a gowning room at the start of a shift, there will be batches of people going through the gowning room at various stages throughout the day.
It is important that no one is held up when passing through the various stages in a clean room. If, for example, there is only one small gowning bench, others will have to wait behind the ones in front before they can move throughout the room.

So ensure there is no bottlenecks throughout the gowning room.

As mentioned above, there will typically be batches of workers going through a gowning room at one time, due to shifts. They won’t all arrive at the same time, however there will be a 10-15 minute slot that the area would get particularly busy.
Work out how many people on average are on a busy shift, and plan your design around this, to ensure efficiency.

For example, if you have 40 people on one shift, and they arrive within a 10-15 minute time slot, the room could have between 4-8 people flowing through every minute. An efficient design would allow people to be through the process within 2-3 minutes. As each station isn’t a long routine, people will flow through. However, for numbers like this, there needs to be at least two of each type of station set up, to ensure no bottlenecks.

Depending on your hygiene and efficiency requirements, you may require shoe storage, boot racks, gowning racks, gowning benches, gowning cabinets, and boot wash machines throughout your gowning room.

We advise to plan the design and flow first, then analyse what products you require, and quantities.

As there are multiple steps to be followed through the gowning room, it is important that these steps are made clear, and easy to be followed. Place signs up around the room, and step/stage numbers, so everyone is taken through the process thoroughly.
We also advise to put floor markings down that indicate where to go next, as well as what stage number you are up to. See below image.

Designing and planning a gowning room can be complicated. Typically working with a small area, with lots to be packed into it, while ensuring hygiene standards are upheld. For more advice on designing a gowning room, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

To view our gowning room products, click here: https://alliedfinishes.com/product-category/hygiene/

To view our hygiene room project services, click here: https://alliedfinishes.com/washroom-cleanroom-projects/