The design, atmosphere, and overall look of your store matter. The kind of lighting you choose is one of the essential pieces that dictate consumer experience. The way you want potential buyers to perceive and experience your place of business starts with lighting.
Whether you are setting a mood with dimmable LED light fittings or looking to go big and bright, never underestimate the power and potential of lighting and how it impacts consumers. In the following article, we’ll take a closer look at how lighting influences consumer behaviors and buying habits and if it has any impact on sales. Read on!
How does lighting in stores affect consumers?
Lighting plays a subtle yet key role in shaping the store’s environment and tingling the senses of potential consumers. It influences the way people shop for products, and most importantly, where.
In retail, lighting should visually highlight the products, as well as make the surrounding space aesthetically pleasing and invoke a welcoming and calm feeling. The goal is to influence their emotions to enhance their shopping experience, and ultimately, their desire to buy merchandise.
Contrast lighting
By developing shade and light patterns and creating a contrast, you discreetly and quite literally, put the spotlight on specific areas of the space. This is done on purpose to emphasize one surface while leaving another part in the darkness. In a retail environment, contrast lighting consists of two major elements: ambient and accent lighting. Ambient and accent lighting produce contrasts of lighting to highlight certain products and draw the consumer’s attention.
Color temperature
Color temperature is another crucial element of lighting that is proven to impact potential buyers and their feelings when shopping. Color temperature or correlated color temperature (CCT) is the color that a light source emits. How the consumer perceives something will depend on the warmth or coolness of the lighting. Warm color lighting, for example, tends to evoke a sense of calmness and pleasure.
Therefore, the color and contrast lighting in a retail setting must be combined to produce an effective balance of the foreground where the product is, with the background space to grab the consumer’s attention.
How does lighting affect sales?
Bright lighting is typically associated with energy and a sense of optimism. It’s proven to have a positive impact on the consumer’s impression of a store, which then translates to sales. The way lighting is set up in a retail space directly impacts the consumer’s level of interest.
Bright lighting makes the consumer shop for products quicker. However, quick shopping doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll buy more. The downside of bright lighting is that, without highlighted areas, consumers are more likely to miss or overlook a specific item. To tackle this issue, retailers use balanced and contrast lighting in areas of the store to put emphasis on a product or area. Finding the right balance between not too dim and not too bright is essential to the store’s overall atmosphere.
This isn’t to say dim lighting doesn’t have its place in retail lighting design. Where bright lighting ups the pace of shopping, dim lighting slows the tempo in which consumers shop. The dimness of the light produces a sense of intimacy and sets a familiar tone to the retail space.
Where can I find quality dimmable LED lighting fittings near me?
Here at LF Illumination, our goal is to enhance your store’s experience and business alike. For nearly a decade, we’ve been the go-to lighting company in Los Angeles County and the region. We boast a selection of premium lighting for your commercial, retail, and residential spaces. Our experts are at your service for all your lighting needs!