• Lighting in Retail Shops and Supermarkets is not all about brightness.

• Light and dark areas are decisive.

• Sales are significantly influenced by perception and a sense of well-being.

• Light conveys emotions and provides an atmosphere for customers to easily find their way around.

• Attention, attractiveness and perception will provide more sales of merchandise, increased traffic, and a longer time by customers in stores and shops.

• Customers’ subjective perceptions are influenced by light color, light distribution, lighting intensity, and subtle differences in brightness and color.

• Visual effects such as contrast and color perception are shown to be generally valid in laboratory tests.

• These tests were compared to actual retail situations in a Perfume Shop and a Supermarket.

• Eye tracking cameras were used to record customers’ eye movements.

• Invaluable technical principals were proven for professional lighting designers.

• Lighting designers need to do more than simply attract customers’ attention.

• Improving customers’ convenience and enhancing a sense of well-being improve their experience.

• Lighting that is high-contrast instead of increased-brightness saves energy while making perception comfortable and heightening levels of attention.

• Pinpoint accent lighting allows contrasts to stand out from surrounding ambient illumination.

• Ambient illumination provides the sense of well-being combined with vertical lighting which defines the boundaries of room borders, each contributing to the perception and attractiveness of displayed goods.

• Colors convey emotions and influence the appropriateness of the retail offerings.

• Cool white-light develops spaciousness, as daylight does, generally preferred by males.

• Warm white-light creates closeness and familiarity with a safe-secure feeling, generally preferred by females.

• Intermediate white-light is most effective for increasing the time customers spend and their improved a sense of well-being. It is best used for general (ambient) lighting.

• Therefore, different white-light effects are favored within a single lighting concept.

• For up-scale designs, tunable LED white-light technology obtains subtle color changes using cutting-edge control systems.

• Display windows require special lighting. Accent lighting for merchandise, and bright-white ambient lightning to attract attention. At night, the accent lighting alone, even at low illuminance, is sufficient to attract curiosity. Subtle changes in lighting patterns may be interesting.

• Lower levels of shelves go relatively unnoticed. Appropriate accent or vibrant lighting in the lower third of shelving might boost sales. Shelf-integrated lighting is recommended at all levels.

• Wide-area back-lighting for shelving or cases is a more attractive effect compared to accent lighting alone. Together, both show merchandise more attractively and provide easier item identification.

Excerpted in part from a study by Zumtobel, www.zumtobelgroup.com/en