Pottery Studio Layout & Floor Planning

Part of Open Your Studio, our guide series for opening a pottery studio in the UK.

At some point you'll be standing in an empty unit with a tape measure, trying to picture it full of people making. How many wheels will actually fit? Where does the sink go? Will a teacher be able to see everyone? And will the place still be clean by the end of week three? Those questions matter more than they seem to. The layout decides how many people you can teach at once, which caps your income. It also decides how much clay ends up walked into the carpet of the office next door.

The good news is that a pottery room follows the clay, and the clay always takes the same route. Get that route right and the rest falls into place. For a quick read on what your space can hold, put the dimensions into the Studio Layout Planner. It allows for walkways, wet and dry zones and a kiln room, and gives you a realistic number of throwing stations.

Start with the timetable, not the floor

Every over-stuffed studio we've seen started with a floor plan and tried to fit in as many wheels as possible. Every well-run one started with a timetable. Your biggest class, the most people making at once, is your wheel count. Then add one spare. The spare covers a fault, gives the teacher a demo wheel, and takes the member who always turns up early.

Allow about 1.5 m × 1.5 m per wheel. That includes the stool, the splash pan and somewhere to put a ware board. So eight wheels need a space of roughly 5 m × 4 m before you add a single bench or shelf. The whole making room needs a lot more than that once you add walkways, sinks, wedging, glaze and drying. The Layout Planner works on around 5 m² of total floor per wheel once circulation and wet and dry zones are allowed for, with the kiln room on top.

These are planning numbers to argue with, not rules. Pillars, awkward corners and where the drain happens to be will all move them.

Zone it: wet, dry, glaze, kiln

Think of the room as a one-way route for clay: in through the door, wedged, thrown, trimmed, dried, bisque fired, glazed, glaze fired, collected. The best layouts let work move in one direction without crossing back through a cleaner area. In practice that means four zones, plus somewhere clean.

• Wet zone. Wheels, the sink, the wedging bench and reclaim buckets. This is where water and slip go everywhere, so it gets the best floor and the drain.
• Dry zone. Hand-building tables, drying racks and greenware waiting for the kiln. Keep it out of the splash zone so work dries evenly and doesn't get knocked.
• Glaze area. Away from the wheels, with a wall of clearly labelled buckets, a table for dipping and somewhere to wipe glaze off feet. Glaze in the throwing area ends up in the clay.
• Kiln room. Separate and lockable, next to the glaze area and the drying racks so nobody carries a full ware board the length of the building. Our kiln ventilation and safety guide covers clearances and extraction.
• Clean zone. Coats, bags, the tea point and any reception desk, kept outside the making area so clay doesn't travel with people's shoes.

Arranging the wheels for teaching

For classes, sightlines are everything. Every student needs to see the demo wheel, and the teacher needs to see every wheel head from one spot. A horseshoe around a demo wheel works well in most rooms. Two facing rows work in long, narrow spaces. Wheels facing the wall suit members working on their own, but they make teaching harder. Leave enough room behind each stool for a teacher to stand and lean in.

Keep power off the floor. The wheels want their own RCD-protected circuit with sockets above splash height, so plan socket positions with your electrician once the wheel positions are fixed (see our electrical requirements guide). Trailing leads across a wet walkway are the trip hazard you'll keep tripping over.

And buy one wheel model. Mixed wheels mean mixed pedals, mixed splash pans and a teacher explaining two systems in every class. Spare parts are simpler too. We designed the Daisy and Thistle with class use in mind. The Daisy Gen 2, for example, has a brushless motor and a splash pan that clips apart for cleaning, which matters more than you'd think at 9pm after the last class. Our pottery wheels page has both.

Water, the sink and the floor

Every studio needs a sink with a clay trap. It's the one thing every plumber gets wrong, because a normal sink is designed to let everything go down the drain, and clay will set solid in the pipe. Our guide to clay traps explains how they work. Put the sink close to the wheels but not in the main walkway, and allow space for buckets underneath or beside it. People will rinse tools, bats and hands there all day.

For the floor, you want something washable and non-slip, ideally with a fall to a floor drain if the building allows. Sealed concrete or a safety vinyl both work. Carpet and bare timber don't. The floor matters because it's how you control dust. Studios should be cleaned wet: mopped, not swept. Dried clay is where the silica dust comes from. Our silica and COSHH guide explains why that's the real long-term safety issue in any pottery. Give the mop and buckets a home of their own.

Benches, boards, racks and member shelves

• Wedging bench. A plaster or canvas top on a heavy, solid frame against a wall, lower than a kitchen worktop so people can lean their weight into the clay. One bench for about every four throwers is a sensible start.
• Ware boards. Every maker needs somewhere to put a pot the moment it comes off the wheel. Have more boards than wheels.
• Drying racks. Size these from your output. Eight people, six sessions a week and two pieces each comes to about 96 pieces a week, and each one sits on a rack for days before it's fired. Racks on wheels let you move a whole class's work to the kiln room in one go.
• Damp storage. A damp cupboard or covered shelves for work in progress between sessions.
• Member shelves. A labelled shelf or cubby per member, plus two clearly signed shelves: "waiting to be fired" and "fired, please collect". Uncollected work quietly eats a room, so set a collection rule from day one.

Access and exits

Plan for the people you want to welcome, not just the ones you picture. A step-free entrance, at least one wheel position a wheelchair user can get to and work at, a hand-building table at a comfortable seated height and a reachable sink make a real difference. As a service provider, you also have duties under the Equality Act 2010 to make reasonable adjustments. Keep the main walkways wide enough for someone carrying a ware board to pass a seated thrower, and never let racks or clay bags block a fire exit. Your fire risk assessment should confirm the routes. If you're still choosing a building, our guide to finding and fitting out a space covers what to check before you sign.

Sketch it, then walk it

Draw the room to scale on squared paper (one square to 50 cm works well) and cut out paper wheels, benches and racks so you can move them around. Then mark the layout on the actual floor with masking tape and walk the clay route: bag of clay in, wedged, thrown, on the rack, into the kiln, back out to the glaze area, onto the collection shelf. If you double back or squeeze past a stool, move something. It's much cheaper to move tape than a plumbed sink.

Setting up at home rather than opening to the public? Our home kiln buying guide is the better place to start.

Keep reading

• Finding & Fitting Out a Space: what to check before you sign the lease.
• Kiln Ventilation & Safety: clearances, extraction and who loads the kiln.
• How Much It Costs: equipment budgets at 4, 8 and 12 wheels.