Segmenting site into business + consumer

My client has 2 audiences with different information and agendas for each. One is the consumer side, which will be mostly information about the company and educational material. The other side is the business side which is for selling their service to businesses.

They want to segment the site by having a gating page where the user selects 1 of 2 options “I'm a business” vs. “I'm a consumer” (still working on copy). Then, depending on the option, you'll be taken to a different section of the site with different navigation. I wasn't a fan of the idea but don't have final say-so on the matter.

So I'm wondering, what are your thoughts on segmenting the site like this?

Also, they want the 2 separate sections to look differently, even though it's the same website; i.e. use more blue and imagery for consumer and more orange and widgets for business. This also seems like a bad choice, but other than the obvious “users should know they're on the same site” argument I can't find a good way to articulate why this isn't a great choice.