How your business can benefit from additional lighting

18 Sep How your business can benefit from additional lighting

There is nothing worse than making a bad first impression. They are nigh on impossible to correct, and in the world of business, this is especially true.

For businesses who rely on customer experience to turn a profit, like jewellers, shops, restaurants, and bars, first impressions are crucial. And you might not think it, but lighting plays a lead role in making a great first impression.

It’s all about ambience

The ambience of a store is determined by a lot of things, including the façade, window display, music, and fixtures. But without good lighting, none of the things mentioned above matter at all. You need lighting to experience them.

The right ambience attracts the right kind of customers through your door, which is something jewellers know all too well.

Jewellers use a significant amount of warm, yellow lighting in customer areas, and white light in product areas. They also use coloured LED lighting to set the mood for different types of purchase. Pink for engagement rings, red for valentine’s gifts, blue for men’s watch purchases, etc. This all helps with ambience.

With your business, ask yourself how different tones of lighting, and how different colours, could be used to improve ambience.

You can also change ambience with dimmers, timers, automated switches, and strobes and ambient lighting. Japanese paper shades are great for a relaxed vibe, while LED strobe bulbs (set on a soft setting) are great for edgy retail stores.

It’s also about legibility

Retail store Hollister is probably the only store in the world that can get away with dreary lighting, because it’s part of the ‘experience’. But for other stores, dim lighting, or a lack of good lighting, is a massive turn off for customers.

The reason is the inability to see detail. With products like watches, jewellery, shoes, clothes, and also food, customers want to inspect the product.

This might happen quickly, like with a net of tangerines, or slowly, like with a fine leather jacket. But the inspection still happens, and the harder you make it, the less likely someone is to buy your product. This is a proven fact in retail.

By introducing additional lighting into your store or retail environment, you improve the chances of a purchase happening because you make it easier for your customer to inspect the product, which improves their experience in your store.

A better experience equals more sales.

Other business spaces

Office spaces can benefit from additional lighting to provide a lighter and airier environment for workers and clients. Warm lighting that restricts blue light can also improve performance because it is less strenuous on the eyes.

Elsewhere, workspaces like car garages, body shops, and warehouses can benefit from additional lighting through improved legibility and safety. LED lights can be used to reduce the energy footprint of commercial spaces too.

We recommend all businesses consider energy-efficient lighting in the near future, to reduce their energy consumption. If you would like to find out more about this, we’re here to offer advice. Just call us on 0800 9788 168.