Light up sales with bright ideas |
| By Natalie Tan |
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Shed some light on your merchandise with the right intensity, color and placement. Lighting does more than allow customers to see what your store has to offer. Lighting selection, intensity and color used to illuminate merchandise can affect sales. How can you plan lighting that will encourage guests to see, and spend more? Consider these three compelling factors: 1. Lighting placement. A major mistake retailers often make is lighting the walkway. We don’t want customers to trip, but that can be addressed with sufficient lighting elsewhere. Face lighting toward wall merchandise and products displayed on floor fixtures. Lighting shouldn’t face shoppers as they walk in. Ideally, lighting for floor units should be directed toward walls and point toward the back. Lighting selection, intensity and color used to illuminate merchandise can affect sales.2. Lighting levels. The three basic levels of illumination include ambient, accent and task lighting. I frequently suggest track lighting with a universal track head, as these are relatively inexpensive and readily available. I also use flood lamps (Parabolic Aluminized Reflector 38) to create ambient lighting and direct them diagonally in a crisscrossing pattern along the wall to illuminate inventory housed there. The same can be accomplished at nesting tables and other floor merchandising units. For accent, I use PAR20 for a concentrated brighter light focusing on focal displays. I usually end up with a ratio of four flood lamps to one focal lamp. Another lighting enhancement is to add pendants above feature tables to draw attention. For task lighting at the cash counter, pendant lamps create a more intimate atmosphere. |
