We can provide you with a professional retail lighting design that attracts customers, improves their shopping experience, keeps them on the premises and encourages purchasing. In addition, we will save you money with energy-saving strategies, and will make sure that the lighting is appropriate for the tasks to be performed.
Good Retail Lighting is a Marketing Tool
Good lighting is functional, suitable and attractive, and varies with the size of the store or the area, and the display or the exhibit to be illuminated.
- Ambient Lighting – This lighting guides customers safely through the store and is the vertical, diffused, general lighting that provides a welcoming atmosphere and visual comfort with softened shadows. It is the first choice for large stores, large areas, fitting rooms, cashier locations and storage areas.
- Accent Lighting and Decorative Lighting – This lighting draws the eye, highlights displays, focuses attention, can beam from above or below, makes featured merchandise easy to recognize, evaluate, and can initiate purchasing.
The Type of Store Dictates Light Levels
The type of store is often reflected in its size and its architecture. Depending on the type of store, it requires different degrees of illumination.
- Supermarket, Warehouse, Discount – Stores are usually spacious, often with high ceilings and needing to be brightly illuminated. Vertical lighting makes orientation easier in a large room, and well-lit signage makes it easier for shoppers to find departments and products.
- Department, Specialty, Lifestyle – Stores are typically large and open with a number of displays and a wide selection of products, and are well served with medium light levels and accent lighting for featured merchandise.
- Designer, Upscale Specialty, Upscale Lifestyle, Fine Jewelry – Customarily small to very small, lower light levels are usually chosen for these stores to create an intimate atmosphere with dramatic uses of color and accent lighting selected for their emotional appeal.
An Analysis of Each Individual Store is Essential
Before lighting styles and illumination levels are chosen, the individual store must be analyzed – its size, the architecture of the building, its target market, its location, its image and its budget – in order to determine lighting requirements. There is no blanket lighting solution for a “type” of store.
- Control of the light and the path of the spill to reduce glare and account for reflected light from various surfaces are considerations that dictate such choices as the type of general and fill lighting, backlighting, uplighting and downlighting.
- A balance of ambient and accent lighting is needed for visual comfort and special effects.
- Contrast, color and lighting sources influence customer decisions, and must be chosen for the individual store, various areas in the store and its special features.
A Good Lighting Design Impacts Your Bottom Line
Lighting controls and schedules save energy and electrical costs:
- By using timers, window lights can be left operating all night, while inside lights can be confined to the hours of store operation and re-set to provide strong illumination for the cleaning and restocking staff.
- Dimming and photo sensors are great for controlling exterior lights and for controlling interior lights when various seasons and times of day benefit by illumination from the sun.
LED lighting is cost effective in spite of the initial higher cost of switching from incandescent lamps to new lighting fixtures such as light emitting diode (LED) lamps. The cost savings in electricity recoups the investment very quickly.
- LED lighting allows the retailer to use lower wattage lamps and, with lower wattage, there are astonishing savings.
- LED lighting reduces pollution and saves our natural resources, which will please everyone who is concerned about the protection of the environment. When you are identified as a good corporate citizen, you build goodwill with your customers and with the community.
Lighting is a marketing tool that is too important to be left to chance. Call us today. We can help you save money and make money with clever lighting solutions. For more information, contact Lighting Solutions Worldwide: website: www.retaillightinganddesign.com; phone: 866-203-0434; email: pmiller@cbmcinc.com.
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