Factors to be considered before fitting out your installations with changing room lockers

Any company where employees are required to wear a uniform or specific work clothes needs to have a changing room area that is convenient for its workers.

Having lockers where clothes and other personal belongings can be kept safe, avoid losses, and also employees having to carry their personal belongings daily from their homes to the company and back again, is more convenient for employees.

Also, having locker zones for keeping personal or work items, manages to keep the company’s common zones clear, tidy and clean, improving work centre hygiene. Fitting out changing room zones with lockers will definitely achieve a cleaner, safer and more comfortable work environment.

But before choosing one type of locker over another, we should know about some of the important aspects to be considered in making our choice:

Choose the locker dimensions according to the type of objects or clothes to be kept in them.

POLYPAL has a wide range of lockers of configurable widths, depths, and heights, to adapt to any requirement, even having especially wide lockers designed for bulky uniforms and work clothes. If however, the aim is to use lockers for small objects such as PPE or work tools, there are also lockers with specific measurements for this case.

Choose the locker finish based on where they will be installed

There is a wide variety of locker finishes: phenolic laminate, wood effect, plastic, aluminium or metal lockers, the latter being the ones in highest demand.

The benefit of metal lockers is that they are strong and robust, cost less than other finishes, are easy to clean, and barely require any maintenance. For wet changing zones, the use of plastic or aluminium lockers is recommended, due to the great water-resistance of these materials.

Phenolic laminate and wood effect lockers stand out for their more sophisticated appearance. If the changing room zone requires maintaining a homogenous design and we want to give the room a more modern feel, we will choose this type of locker.

POLYPAL lockers also come with the patented ActiveCoat protection. An antibacterial finish that is incorporated during the locker manufacturing process and offers constant protection against moulds and bacteria. This coating reduces the risk of cross contamination from high contact surfaces and complements existing hygiene protocols, helping to create a cleaner, safer and more salubrious environment. Ideal for sectors requiring strict hygiene standards such as the medical, chemical, or food sectors.

Pay attention to the quality of the lockers

As changing rooms are high traffic zones used daily, they need to be fitted with resistant lockers. Therefore, locker durability is an essential characteristic to be considered in making our choice.

POLYPAL have been tested and meet standard BS 4680:1996 in relation to the product. To obtain BS 4680:1996 standard approval, the products need to meet key criteria encompassing dimensions, materials, manufacture, and finish, in addition to locks, accessories, and ventilation.

If we want to make sure the chosen locker has a robust design, we must select a supplier with experience in manufacturing lockers, this way we will have guarantees that all locker components have been designed to be high-resistance.

Choose lockers with extra safety

To store objects safely and avoid thefts from the lockers, POLYPAL has extra safety elements, such as: anti-theft tray, doors with reinforced edges, hinges welded to the door and bolted to the frame, different types of lock (with key, padlock, digital combination, etc.)

Guarantees locker hygiene

In addition to the ActiveCoat antibacterial coating that comes as standard with all POLYPAL lockers, there are optional accessories that also help to maintain hygiene in the dressing room:

Roofed lockers. The roof incline prevents dirt from accumulating and makes it easy to clean. It also helps to avoid items being left behind on top of the locker.

Locker supports. These supports raise the lockers above floor level to facilitate cleaning and at the same time reduce damage through collisions with the locker base.

Improved user experience

POLYPAL lockers provide for different internal layouts according to requirements. Depending on the use of the locker, we can add accessories inside such as hanger bars, hooks, horizontal and vertical divider trays, etc.

To add to dressing room convenience, we can also provide the lockers with dressing room benches. These can be anchored to the lockers or stand separately with backrests and hooks for hanging clothes on.

Make sure you choose the right locker supplier

Designing the installations of a changing room presents many challenges. Fulfilling Human Resources requirements and Health and Safety specifications, while at the same time, optimising the space available insofar as possible, is the specific job of companies with storage solutions expertise.

Also, it is important to choose a supplier with a long industrial track record who can offer us a top-quality aftersales service. If the need arises to extend the installation, replace the keys to the locks, or change the internal distribution of the lockers because customer requirements have changed, we can rest assured that the supplier will continue to offer us this type of service.

At POLYPAL, we can advise you to obtain the best locker solution for your changing room equipment.