How To: Use lighting to enhance customer experience

Kleinfeld Bridal, the New York City-based bridal retail legend and home to TLC's "Say Yes to The Dress," recently had a dilemma: Brides weren't sure the dresses they tried on matched the precise color of the ones they ordered.

The solution: Swap the facility's outdated lights with best-in-class, color-rendering LED systems, which brought outside-quality illumination inside and allowed the retailer's merchandise to be showcased in their truest colors inside dressing rooms, hallways and sitting areas.

Graham's Style Store, a high-end fashion boutique in Dubuque, Iowa, experienced similar success when it updated its facility with a higher-quality set of lighting. The retrofit made the pinstripes, patterns and textures of the store's finely crafted clothing come alive.

Both instances show that lighting is a big deal in the retail world.

Sure, it has always played a critical role in running a business. Shoppers need adequate lighting to see products, merchandise displays, signs, promotions and checkout lanes. But brick-and-mortar stores are now using specialized lighting techniques and technologies to give shoppers a can't-miss visual and emotional experience that online retailers can't provide.

Mapping an experience

Retailers employ different tactics at each stage of a customer's journey. This journey starts with outdoor window displays to attract foot traffic that bring customers to strategic displays inside.

Call it directional lighting. It's a carefully detailed map of lighter and darker, sometimes multicolored areas that deliberately lead customers to more desired areas such as higher-end products, sales, new product lines and promotions. This lighting strategy aids in generating impulse purchases.

The brightness of the light retailers utilize in areas and displays, and their selected hues, contribute to a sudden shopping itch. Shoppers are naturally drawn toward areas that are not just well-lit but also have contrasting light. Blue light attracts more wanderers. Warmer-lit areas make them linger longer.

Other tactics help steer shoppers. They include vertical or layered lighting, to give greater depth and urge more browsing, and contrasting spotlights and lighting directions, to give greater dimension and add excitement or drama. Accent lighting is another magnet for drawing eyeballs to a certain product or area.

Setting the mood

Light also shapes how customers feel — consciously and subconsciously — about a store, product or overall retail experience. Many components such as brightness, color rendering, temperature and fixtures will impact a shopper's mood.

Certain fixtures evoke a certain ambiance. Vintage fixtures, chandeliers and dome lighting create an intimate feel, while recessed lights, track lighting and suspended fixtures generate a more modern or professional look.

The warmth or coolness of a light's temperature also plays a considerable role. Cool white light makes stores appear spacious, while warmer color temperatures feel friendlier— creating the impression of smallness and familiarity.

Lighting can influence a shopper's pace. Brighter lights promote energy and positivity; thus, they tend to speed up the shopping experience. Dim light, on the other hand, promotes relaxation and calmness to slow down the pace.

The type, color and brightness of the light retailers choose can depend on several factors, none more prominent than a store's product lineup, targeted audience and perhaps the time of day.

A better visual

Merchandise looks very different under different light sources. The right lighting can make colors appear richer, products pop and patterns dazzle. Under the wrong light, these same products look dull.

Showing products in the best possible light, at the right angle, and to render the right color is a make-or-break requirement. Nuanced differences in color will affect the stature of a brand, including the perceived level of luxury, value and quality.

The Seoul International Color Expo, in fact, reported that about 93 percent of customers consider visual factors like color a top factor when shopping. About 85 percent said color accounts for more than half of the factors when purchasing a product.

Retailers take note

Research suggests that a well-designed, up-to-date store sees more return visits and higher sales than those with tired interiors. This means investing in the right lighting for your store pays off in the long-run.

In the past, stores relied broadly on fluorescent lights to illuminate their areas. Today, more and more retailers have installed high-tech, tunable LED lighting systems and controls, which are environmentally friendlier, offer the best color rendering capabilities, last longer and require significantly less maintenance. Paired with higher sales and more customers, the right lighting system can yield greater ROI.

With online and dollar store competition gaining more market share, supermarkets are spending more time and capital on their perimeters to keep shoppers and attract new ones. Upgraded lighting systems have been installed to better illuminate high-margin departments like produce, meats, seafood and flowers. Naturally red meats look like tonight's dinner, while the vegetables appear greener and crisper. It's an eye-popping, mouthwatering experience that shopping with a keyboard cannot duplicate.

Bill Plageman is vice president of marketing and product development at Amerlux, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Delta Electronics.