hen it came time to remodel the showroom, Pam Lloyd and Dan Hyatt added lights — lots and lots of lights.
“We layered with halogen spots,” says Lloyd, part-owner of Northwest Hot Spring Spas Inc. in Burlington, Wash. “You can actually see what you’re doing now. The old lighting was poor at best, just track lighting. And from the outside, it was hard to tell we were open.”
Use of store design techniques, particularly lighting, is gaining awareness with pool and spa retailers. Store owners working with light say they are doing so because today’s consumers expect more from the shopping experience. Not only do retailers need to provide great customer service and product choices, but they also have to create a pleasing and entertaining shopping environment — and lighting goes a long way toward achieving the right effect.
“Our customers are much more sophisticated than what they were,” says Elaine Hoekstra, a principal of the design firm Retail Store Concepts in Grand Rapids, Mich., and a former pool and spa retailer. “There is competition out there that we have to keep up with if we want to stay a specialty store.”
To help keep their competitive advantage, retailers should use light creatively in their stores. Admittedly, it is difficult to calculate profit from a light source and easier to see the loss each time the electric bill arrives. But although lighting is an intangible investment, retail-store designers say it has a very direct impact on how customers interact with products, and how much they buy.
On the same wavelength
Without saying a word, retailers can use lighting to impress customers and make them feel comfortable about making purchases. Poor lighting, however, can have people backing out the door.
“People are led by the light,” says Allen Rogers, principal of the retail design firm Rogers and Rogers Inc. in New York. “Light gives things character. It shows distance and space. It creates comfort.”
Light is usually associated with warmth and safety, while darkness is associated with cold and danger. What people can’t see creates uneasiness, and stores with too little light can end up warning the customer away.
“One lighting [source] is not allowing customers to feel comfortable in the space,” says John Sapanaro, owner of Lighting Management Inc. in New City, N.Y., noting that many of the mass merchandising stores are beginning to rethink their lighting strategies. “If the light is brighter above a person’s eye level, you get the effect of a cloudy day,” he adds.
If the light is brighter below eye level, you end up with a very dramatic look, says Sapanaro. If light is equally distributed throughout the store, it will have an open, inviting atmosphere. To make people feel the most comfortable and to encourage them to stay longer, layers of indirect lighting (at least two) are needed.
“You need a happy medium between too much light above and too much from below,” Sapanaro says. “Otherwise, the eyes end up doing too much work, too much constricting and dilating.”
But that doesn’t mean you can’t then add pools of light to draw customers to particular areas of the store, he adds.
“The critical element of lighting is to get the eye to move [comfortably] so a customer subconsciously walks through your store,” Sapanaro says.
One way to make lighting act as a guide for your customers is to use it to strategically highlight products and displays around the store. A good spotlighting strategy will include not just one or two product lines you really want customers to see, but rather, all selling points in your store.
The type of light used and the amount of light falling on products also is important to keep in mind. For instance, consider how people might unknowingly react to the amount of light on your chemical or parts packages. If it’s not enough, customers can become annoyed, straining to read the print, and they won’t spend long with the product. But, on the other end, too much light on the shiny packages of toys, for example, can make shoppers shy away from the glare.
Light can also influence how much a customer expects to pay for products, and turn them off if prices don’t match their expectations. “How products look in a space sells them,” Rogers says. “If you have a sweater under cold, fluorescent lighting and it’s $39, it’ll probably sell at $39. But if it’s a $500 sweater, it needs light that highlights the weaving and the shape of the sweater.
“The key is to add drama and dimensions,” Rogers notes. “[Your products] should not look flat.”
Brian Dyches has helped with the interior design of many pool and spa retail stores. The principal of the Retail Resource Group in Laguna Niguel, Calif., says he usually finds that retailers aren’t aware of the impact lighting has on price value perception.
But retailers have to convince customers that the products are worth investing in, says Dyches. They need to know that a $5,000 spa illuminated by only one light source lowers the value of that spa in the customer’s mind.
“We’re selling Rolex watch-type products, but lighting like we’re in a dollar store,” he says. “[Poor lighting is like] giving the customer a 10-percent-off coupon. You want to make each product look individually special, not average.”
Light also affects customers at the sales counters, says Dyches. The area needs to be lit well enough that customers can make the transaction without straining their eyes, but the light also can’t be too harsh and direct.
“You want them to feel warm and safe and comfortable with what they’re doing,” Dyches says.
And there was light …
By making adjustments in the placement of your lights and the type of bulbs you purchase, you can encourage positive responses from consumers and switch on feelings that encourage them to buy.
First, you need to establish the kind of light they need to find their way around the store — the base lighting (also called general lighting or ambient lighting).
Incandescent bulbs or fluorescents usually work best; however, a variety of bulb choices exists within these two categories. It’s best to choose bulbs that rank high on the Color Rendering Index, a numerical system that rates the way color appears under different lighting. The CRI scale goes from 0 to 100 (natural daylight). Ideally, you want a bulb with a high CRI rating — the higher the number, the better the colors will appear under the light. A bulb with a CRI of 91 shows colors more naturally than one with a CRI of 62. Most standard fluorescent bulbs range from 60 to 75 CRI. Look for the CRI rating on light bulb packaging.
Dyches advises taking a picture of your store’s interior to get an idea of which areas are not reached by light. Dark spots will show up in the photo.
Next, to counterbalance the cloudy-day effect created by having all your light come from above, you may want to consider highlighting the perimeter of the store, even if you don’t have merchandise displayed on the walls.
“This creates a very high-end look, a very specialized effect,” Dyches says. Wall washing with flood lights or track lighting also can make your store appear larger than it really is.
But the high-end look doesn’t have to throw off the budget. Even if you’re in a strip mall and have to work with 2-by-4 foot fluorescent ambient light, this technique can help brighten your store, says designer Hoekstra.
“Just add track lighting to light the walls,” she says. “It’s so efficient, inexpensive and easy to get hold of.”
Next, you want to begin highlighting products by adding accent lights, commonly spotlights with halogen bulbs. While retailers usually have a wide variety of merchandise, several strategies can make the customer browse longer.
“Chemicals, for example, have small print and many of the customers are of an older demographic,” Dyches says. “The light needs to be hitting labels correctly.” He recommends that the light not be placed directly above the chemical shelves, but instead, add track lighting 3 to 3-1/2 feet from the wall.
This technique works in other areas of the store as well. Rather than have the light hit the top of floor fixtures or the heads of customers, aim light sources so they highlight the front of the displays, and the product on them. How high you have to place the fixtures will determine the correct wattage and beam spread needed from the bulb — other considerations to make when purchasing the lights.
Be careful not to overuse accent lighting. Too much will compete with the ambient lighting. Keeping a clear contrast between the two helps move the eye of the customer and keeps them walking through the store.
