WHY LIGHTING DESIGN IS IMPORTANT IN RETAIL STORES?
Lighting design is a powerful tool to show product value. However many retail store owners ignore this fact that can make stores more effective. The perfect Lighting design and presentation not only draw customers to enter the store but it gives more expensive and luxurious perception about your products.
WHAT SHOULD YOU KNOW BEFORE BUYING LUMINAIRES AND PLACING THEM IN YOUR STORE?
Here are 7 Tools to attract attention and give more luxurious view to your store.
ACCENT LIGHTS
Use accent lighting to show customers what you want them to look at, whether are sales pitches, new products or high-priced items. Allow shadows to form around the product to give the sense that these products are important. With a touch of contrast you can highlight your special products and make them remarkable. The perfect balance of accent and ambient lighting is key to the store’s design. Accent lighting can be fun, but if you emphasize everything or nothing, you’re giving up your ability to make products stand out.
If your store has more than one aisle, room,or floor,customers may have a hard time finding their way around. Direction finding lights allow you to reach restrooms, exits or any area your customer needs to see to navigate the store.Beacon and direction finding lights are also accent lights.
AMBIENT LIGHTING
To make your accent lighting stand out, you need to properly create ambient lighting throughout the store. Your store should have a soft stream of light that covers the general walking areas and decorative elements.
General lighting should ensure that your store is illuminated enough to be safe, functional and inviting. At the same time, it shouldn’t be so bright that it prevents your accent lights from showing up.Try to use closer but less powerful lightings instead of very strong spot lightings that are far from each other. Do not allow excessive contrast. Avoid areas that are too bright or too dark throughout the store. Visitors’ pupils constantly expand and contract to accommodate many different light levels as they navigate between such sections. Eye strain occurs in your customers and employees who stay in your store for a long time.
VERTICAL LIGHTING
Another new trend in lighting design is vertical lighting.What this means is lighting evenly from floor to ceiling. The human eye naturally looks to light and the first thing a shopper will notice when walking in front of a store is vertical lighting. Knowing this, we need to illuminate the walls and vertical surfaces to attract potential customers to the space. As a general rule,illuminated walls give stores a fresh and airy atmosphere.
LIGHTING COLOR SELECTION
Be sure to check the color temperature of your lighting products before purchasing. You have to make sure that all lights have the same color temperatures. Mixing color temperatures in the same space creates an unprofessional look.
Color temperature is measured in Kelvin (K), the lowest number (2700K) will give the warmest colors and the highest number (6500K) will produce cool white.
Warm lighting creates a cozy atmosphere, perfect for a bookstore or cafe. Cool lighting, on the other hand, works best for stores where customers need a clear idea of what products look like.
Determine which light color would be more appropriate for the products and services you offer.
CRI SELECTION
CRI (Color rendering Index). Color rendering can be defined as the measure of how faithfully a light source reproduces the colors of the object it illuminates.
The CRI value of daylight is considered 100. The unit of measure for the color rendering index is Ra, and for “daylight” this value is 100.
In lighting, suitable CRI values should be selected according to the places of use of light sources. The highest possible CRI value should be used in places where color is paramount, such as cosmetics and fashion stores, hairdressers and art galleries. However, there are also lightings where the color does not matter. There is no harm in choosing low CRI values here. For example, these low CRI value lightings can be used in parking lot lighting and security lighting.
Use LED lights
LED lighting offers a number of advantages such as long lifetime, low energy consumption, warm and cold light color options, the ability to control (dim) lighting intensity, and a wide variety of sizes and shapes. It is all these features that make LED lighting much more advantageous than traditional lighting systems.
The reasons why LEDs are preferred for point of sale lighting are as follows.
- Energy-saving
Energy saving is very important in shop lighting. This is due to economic reasons as well as more generally ecological awareness and the need to protect and use natural energy resources.LED technology adapts perfectly to these conditions and offers extremely high energy efficiency and from an ecological point of view LED lights are the right lighting for a greener future as they do not contain toxic elements such as mercury.
- Manageability
LED technology can adapt to any situation and is fully customizable, including color change, temperature changes and light intensity. From general lighting to accent lighting, it is possible to adjust the LED lighting according to preferences. LED lighting products can be connected to smart devices and controlled digitally.
- Lifespan and reduced maintenance cost
LED lamps last 25 times longer than incandescent lamps (and if the LED is of good quality, that’s around 30-50k hours) and also feature superior performance, versatile lighting technology. These are all important aspects for retail stores where the lighting is running long hours during the day.
LED lights do not have filaments to protect them from shock or bumps,so LED lights are durable, perfect for indoor and outdoor use.
It means that LED lightings can withstand vibrations, external influences and contact (Customer contact and bad weather).
- Illumination of cold spaces
We should add that LED technology works really well even at low temperatures, which is why LED lamps are the perfect solution for illuminating supermarket refrigerator interiors or parking garages.
Now you have the basics you need to put your retail lighting design together.
You will realize how much the right lighting in stores can increase the value of your business.We encourage you to also check out our other articles to learn more about lighting to help you save time and money.
