By Bond Collective Staff

At first glance, room naming might not seem like an important activity for your team and your business, but it actually plays a significant role in promoting unity and brand consistency.

Sure, you could just call it “the conference room,” but what if your office has multiple such rooms? Or what if your office has meeting rooms scattered around the building? How are you going to differentiate between them all?

In this article, we delve deep into the theory and practice of room naming to help you choose epic names for all the public spaces in your office.

Why Room Naming Is Important

1) Eliminates Confusion

As we touched on in the opening paragraphs, room naming helps eliminate confusion between different areas within your office.

Conference Room One and Conference Room Two will work, as will The Large Conference Room and The Small Conference Room, but they’re extremely prosaic and don’t inspire any sort of feeling or emotion whatsoever.

With the right room naming convention, you can differentiate between any number of spaces (thereby eliminating confusion) and have a bit of fun at the same time.

2) Contributes To Company Culture

Room naming also contributes to company culture. It does this by shaping the lens through which your employees view and interact with your business.

If your company culture is straitlaced and refined, Conference Room One may suffice. But if your company culture is a bit more indulgent, a creative name reinforces that atmosphere and helps employees feel like they’re part of a team.

3) Helps Build An Inclusive Workplace

Similarly, the way you choose to conduct your room naming helps build a more inclusive workplace.

When all of your team members — regardless of age, race, and gender — identify with the behaviors, standards, and norms your business conveys, they’ll see a bit of themselves in the company culture and feel welcome to contribute.

This highlights the importance of choosing names for your meeting rooms from a large cross-section of cultural references rather than restricting the convention to one set of traditions.

Guidelines For Effective Room Naming

well decorated office space to influence room naming

1) Stay On Brand

Building your brand is all about consistency. From what you call your products to the room naming conventions you choose, everything contributes to the way your customers and employees identify with your business.

Straying off brand — as in naming the meeting rooms in your hiking-equipment business after planets or 80s movies — can have everyone scratching their heads in confusion.

Do your best to stay on brand when naming spaces within your business.

2) Pick A Theme

The consistency that is crucial within your brand itself is also crucial within your room naming convention. Pick a theme that is relevant to your brand so that your meeting spaces have one thing in common.

For example, Twitter picked a room naming theme — birds — that easily integrates with their brand and makes sense both to team members and visitors alike.

3) Ensure Scalability

When choosing a theme for your room names, make sure it’s not so specific that it doesn’t allow for scalability.

If you have multiple meeting rooms but you choose the theme “film directors with movies named after a year that are about self-aware, homicidal computers” (2001: A Space Odyssey), you’ll only really have one option.

If you’re having trouble picking a theme, take a look at the options we share in the Creative Room Naming Ideas section below.

4) Ask For Employee Input

Whether you’ve yet to choose a theme or you’re already looking for specific ideas, ask your employees for their input.

Including your employees in the process contributes to company culture, helps build an inclusive workplace, and makes everyone feel like they’re part of a team rather than just cogs in the machine.

Creative Room Naming Ideas

Well lit office lounge area

1) Authors

Pick a genre and get to room naming. (This is a great idea for publishing businesses.)

Below, we’ve listed some ideas from the sci-fi genre:

  • Bradbury

  • Asimov

  • Le Guin

  • Butler

  • Clarke

  • Herbert

  • Wells

  • Heinlein

  • Atwood

  • Shelley

2) Stars

There are 5,000 stars visible from Earth with the naked eye. You probably won’t need that many for your room names, but it’s nice to know they’re there if scalability becomes an issue.

Here are some examples:

  • Polaris

  • Sirius

  • Rigel

  • Vega

  • Antares

  • Castor

  • Pollux

  • Aldebaran

3) Planets

If you choose planets as your room naming theme, you have at least eight options to choose from (nine if you’re on the other side of the Pluto debate).

Any one of these would make a great meeting room name:

  • Mercury

  • Venus

  • Earth

  • Mars

  • Jupiter

  • Saturn

  • Uranus

  • Neptune

4) Colors

People with standard vision can see millions of distinct colors. That’s more than enough for all your room naming needs. Grab a box of Crayolas and pick your favorite.

For even more consistency within your brand, decorate each room with the color scheme after which you named it.

  • Red

  • Orange

  • Yellow

  • Green

  • Blue

  • Violet

  • Amber

  • Indigo

  • Turquoise

5) Birds

If birds are your theme, you’ll have plenty of options to choose from, including:

  • Robin

  • Crow

  • Eagle

  • Hawk

  • Finch

  • Gull

  • Condor

  • Jay

6) Trees

Trees are another excellent theme that provides plenty of familiar options, such as:

  • Walnut

  • Oak

  • Ash

  • Spruce

  • Maple

  • Birch

  • Aspen

  • Olive

  • Magnolia

7) Plants

Plants also make a great theme because, like color, you can decorate each room with items that relate.

If you really want to get creative with your room naming, try out the Latin names of some of these popular plants:

  • Bamboo

  • Cactus

  • Eucalyptus

  • Philodendron

  • Agave

  • Hosta

  • Aloe

8) Cities

Cities also make for great room names. Choosing names from around the world is also a great way to cultivate inclusivity in your business culture.

  • Tokyo

  • New York

  • London

  • Miami

  • Bogota

  • Hong Kong

  • Boston

  • Paris

  • Kinshasa

9) Mountains

Want to communicate strength and resolve in your conference room names? Choose any of the mountains from around the world:

  • Everest

  • K2

  • Denali

  • Ararat

  • Kilimanjaro

  • Annapurna

  • Matterhorn

  • Mont Blanc

10) Scientists

Give a nod to the famous scientists who made the 21st century what it is today by naming your meeting rooms after them. Choose from:

  • Curie

  • Hawking

  • Einstein

  • Tesla

  • Edison

  • Copernicus

  • Newton

  • Galileo

Get Creative With Your Room Naming

creative room naming for a room in the office

If you want to put a bit more brain power into the room naming process, mix it up by combining themes.

Here are a few examples from big-name companies:

  • Collective SOL (musicians + initialism)

  • Darth Jager (Star Wars + drink)

  • Mai Tai Fighter (Star Wars + drink)

  • Oreo Speedwagon (food + band)

  • Sushi and the Banshees (food + band)

Room Naming Done For You

Room naming is, first and foremost, about people.

People need inspiration to do their best work. They need the best tools at hand. They need comfort, flexibility, and community.

Without these variables, employee performance suffers, business success decreases, and your company culture falls apart.

How can you provide all of these essentials without burning through your hard-earned capital or locking yourself into a restrictive and expensive long-term lease? By basing your team in a coworking space, like Bond Collective.

Bond Collective offers thoughtfully curated boutique work environments that provide an unmatched experience for startups, small businesses, and large corporations alike.

We know inspiration doesn’t come easy. When your team does experience a moment of creativity — in the conference room, or wherever — you want to nurture it as much as possible.

Bond Collective decorates, arranges, and operates each one of its many locations with inspiration, creativity, and innovation in mind.

Bright colors, natural light, stimulating textures, and plenty of space for your body and your mind to move around — these are the unique ways in which Bond Collective brings inspiration into the work environment.

Bond Collective also offers industry-leading amenities, including:

  • Fast, reliable WiFi and Ethernet connections

  • Unlimited black-and-white printing

  • Mail and package handling

  • Private meeting and phone booths

  • Guest reception and greeting

  • Custom build-outs

  • Daily porter service

  • Nightly office cleaning

When you and your team don’t have to think about these features, you can focus all of your efforts on getting the job done, pleasing the customer, and improving the way your business operates.

Visit any one of Bond Collective’s many locations in the United States, including workspaces in California, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., Illinois, Tennessee, and Texas. Or call us today to find out more.

And while you’re at it, schedule a tour to experience first-hand how the boutique work environments at Bond Collective can benefit your business.