Lighting Up Your Store: A Guide To Retail Store Lighting

Having the proper store lighting is a crucial aspect of highlighting your product and communicating your overall store brand. In most cases, hiring a lighting specialist/interior designer to help you through the process is the way to go. However, it is important that you understand the four types of store lighting and the order in which they should be selected, so that you can work more effectively with your lighting specialist and have a better idea of what you do and do not really need.

Here are the four main types of lighting and a brief explanation on how the lighting selection process generally works. Keep in mind that, in most cases, these four categories of lighting do overlap to some degree.

General Lighting

You do not want customers to feel that the store has an overall gloomy atmosphere. General lighting ensures that this does not happen. In typical grocery stores and convenience stores, general lighting is often provided by some sort of fluorescent tube lights. In other stores (often speciality and high-end), recessed can lighting or track lighting may be used.

General/Ambient lighting is what is commonly termed the “main” lighting for your store. This is actually a bit of a misnomer, because the real purpose of general lighting is to provide light to those areas of your store which decorative, accent, and task lighting have not sufficiently illuminated.

Although people often assume you select general lighting first, it should actually be the last step in your lighting selection process.

Task Lighting

Task lighting is a more focused lighting that is specifically used to illuminate areas of your store where more lighting is need to perform certain tasks. In most cases, some kind of track or can lighting is used to perform task lighting, because it provides a more concentrated light than something like a fluorescent tube light.

Here are some examples of where task lighting would be used/needed:

1. Store Entrance - To make sure customers are welcomed into the store with adequate lighting
2. Checkout Area - To make sure that cashiers have enough light to do money tasks and also provides extra light for cameras that are monitoring the registers
3. Dressing Room - To make sure that customers have adequate light to see how clothes look when actually worn/tried on.
4. Customer Service Desk - To make sure that store representatives working the customer service desk have enough light to look at computer screens and facilitate returns without too much squinting. A well-lighted customer service desk also provides a professional feel that is important when dealing with dissatisfied customers.

Task lighting is generally the second or third step in the lighting selection process.

Accent Lighting

Accent lighting is used to highlight specific displays and decor in your store. This makes products pop, adding a sense of emphasis and importance. Can lighting or track lighting is generally the preferred fixture type, but other forms of lighting such as goosenecks or rope lighting may be used as well.

Here are some areas where accent lighting is commonly used:

1. Near the front of the store to highlight seasonal/new item displays
2. To highlight pieces of artwork or products on pedestals
3. In display nooks/built-in shelving units to highlight each individual product
4. Above window displays to add visual emphasis and draw customers in

Accent lighting, like task lighting, is generally selected either second or third in the lighting selection process.

Decorative Lighting

According to Fit Small Business, “The whole point of decorative lighting is to emphasize your brand.” For example, high-end jewelry or clothing stores often have a chandelier hanging near the entrance. This emphasizes the idea of class, sophistication, and luxury, setting the tone and feel for the customer as they enter the store.

In some cases, decorative lighting may not be fancy. For example, Chipotle often uses vintage pipe-style industrial light fixtures for their restaurants. This is not necessarily a luxury fixture and some people would not even consider it “decorative” per say, but it does perfectly emphasize and extend their particular brand of modern and clean store design, therefore functioning as decorative lighting in that sense.

Decorative lighting should be the first type of lighting you select, because it has one of the most specific functions. The exception to this is when your decorative lighting is also functioning as your general/ambient lighting. In that case, it should be selected last.

Conclusion

Although it seems counterintuitive, select your lighting from most specific (decorative) to most general (ambient). This guarantees that you have all the lighting you really need without going overboard and spending too much. If you calculate your general lighting first, you will either have too much lighting or need to re-evaluate, essentially having to figure out general lighting twice.

If you know the four types of lighting, where and how they should be used, and the order in which they should be selected, you will be well on your way to selecting the right lighting fit for your store.