Straight vs. Angled Parking: Which Is Right for You?

Every aspect of the customer experience matters. That experience starts long before your customers enter your doors. Many businesses don’t realize that a customer’s first introduction to your store is via the parking lot. We all know how frustrating it can be to navigate an inefficient, crumbly parking lot—it doesn’t leave you in much of a spending mood. You want to ensure your customers have a pleasant experience every step of the way, so you need to know whether straight or angled parking is right for you.

Straight Parking

Straight parking is a common model for parking lots in most shopping centers. This type of parking requires your customer to make a 90-degree turn in their vehicle in order to park. The benefit of straight parking is that you may approach the spot from different angles, and there is more room to park.

That’s why a straight parking lot is ideal, but you should make sure you have large enough dimensions in your lot to accommodate this model. Keep in mind that you should allow for about 300 to 350 square feet of room per parking space. This amount of space also includes accounting for aisles, entrance and exit lanes, and extra space for bordering vehicles.

Angled Parking

Angled parking lots are less common, but you can find them most often in parking garages or on busy city streets. That’s because angled parking lots are an ideal option for crowded areas with less space to work with. The angled method makes more efficient use of the space you have available. You might consider working with an angled parking lot model if you don’t have much space in your lot.

What’s Right for You

Not that you know the difference between straight and angled parking, you can make a better decision about which is right for you and your business. No matter what you choose, you should know it’s quite easy to stripe your parking lot. At NAC Supply Inc., we have all the line striping equipment you could need to get your job finished in no time.