Central Ohio Multi Family and Housing Interior Design

Central Ohio's demand story rests on data centers and advanced manufacturing, and each produces a different kind of resident.

In August 2023, Google said it would spend $1.7 billion to expand its three central Ohio data centers in Columbus, New Albany and Lancaster. Expansion work of that kind typically brings electricians, mechanical trades and commissioning crews during construction, followed by a smaller permanent staff of technicians once the buildings are running.

In January 2025, Anduril announced Arsenal-1, a 5-million-square-foot manufacturing facility on a 500-acre site near Rickenbacker International Airport in Pickaway County, adding a planned 4,000 jobs. A factory payroll behaves differently from a construction crew. Those are permanent positions, and the people who fill them look for a lease, then often a house, and many arrive with households of their own.

For anyone building housing here, the pattern is clear: furnished rooms for the people who build, and long-term homes for the people who run what gets built.

Columbus renters tend to prefer comfortable, unfussy rooms to showpieces, and the climate is hard on anything precious. Cold, gray winters with snow and freeze-thaw cycles push salt and slush through every entry, and warm, humid summers test outdoor fabrics and finishes.

The biggest trade-off is usually custom versus reorderable. Custom pieces set a lobby apart, but standard lines are far easier to replace after years of turnover. For most Columbus rentals, we would keep custom work to the rooms a prospect sees on a tour and use durable, reorderable furniture in units and back-of-house areas.

Beyond that choice, these are the decisions we would raise early with a Central Ohio multi family owner.

• Entry and corridor flooring chosen for salt and moisture, with recessed walk-off zones built into the plan instead of rugs added after opening
• A palette of warm woods, brick tones and limestone that reads as local and hides daily wear
• Layered lighting for short winter days, so amenity rooms feel warm on a dark afternoon
• Pool and patio furniture that tolerates humid summers and can be covered or stored through winter
• Amenity rooms sized for winter use, when the clubroom and fitness room carry more traffic than the pool deck

A Columbus project would run from our Irvine office the way most of our work does, because the majority of our projects are outside Southern California. Our completed projects span states including Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina and New York, so long-distance coordination is ordinary work for our team.

On a Central Ohio job, we would handle FF&E procurement from vendors across the country and route every order to our own receiving warehouse in Southern California. There, each shipment is checked in, inspected for damage and accuracy, and held until the building is ready. Damage gets caught in California, where a replacement can be ordered before the truck leaves, not in a Columbus corridor right before opening.

When the site is ready, goods travel in coordinated deliveries instead of trickling in from separate factories. Our installation partners supply the crew, and a Level Up designer directs where every piece goes, so the building opens with finished rooms rather than a punch list of missing chairs.