EXPERIENCE IS EVERYTHING ACROSS THE HIGH STREET
Retail brands are attracting customers through real-time interactions and engaging store concepts. And retail destinations are becoming multidimensional places where we shop, eat, interact and relax.
How does lighting fit into this rapidly developing picture? The answer lies in how lighting design is being used within the new retail space to deliver a multifaceted experience.
Food is the new fashion
The food revolution is gathering momentum on the high street. In particular, ‘fast fine’ food courts that offer an immersive shared dining experience.
Lighting is a key ingredient in the sophisticated food court where it’s all about creating a holistic dining environment that is rich in atmosphere yet not too cosy. A well-balanced composition of light helps achieve permeability and draw the eye through the space, while applying the right colour temperature makes people feel comfortable but not compelled to linger.
Things are getting personal
Personal experiences such as beauty masterclasses and individual styling sessions are on the rise. Lighting these ancillary brand spaces calls for a tailored approach because once consumers step out of the traditional merchandise arena, their expectations shift.
In a beauty store this can mean finding the best balance of light to colour match products with different skin tones. In a fashion setting, it can relate to how we use interactive technology to create tailored illumination scenes for a personal styling session or adapt the scheme from a retail set up to an animated catwalk show.
It makes perfect sense
Multisensory design is gaining influence as brands become living and breathing entities that we inhabit and immerse ourselves in. Retail design has moved beyond the primary visual sense and experiences have become multi-layered, with light, sound and smell all working in tandem to create memorable brand connections and positive interactions.
Retail lighting is an extract from our 2022 Lighting Design Report. If you’d like to know more about the research and trends shaping the way we design with light across different sectors, contact Paul Nulty here for a copy of the report.
Images © Bozho Gagovski
