Small Commercial Lighting Program

Effective, Energy-Efficient Lighting for Retail Stores

The main tasks in any retail space are buying and selling. The lighting system in your store must be designed to facilitate these tasks. Retail lighting should attract customers into your store, help them evaluate the merchandise, and help your sales people complete each sale quickly and accurately. Research has shown that lighting installations that are carefully designed with these three factors in mind will actually increase retail sales. Lighting also provides your customers with instant cues about the type of store they are entering. Therefore, lighting may be very different in a "mass merchandise" store, such as K-Mart or Wal-Mart, than it is in a department or mall store, such as Macy's or the Gap.

Example of lighting for an upscale mall retail store

Your contractor should keep the following issues in mind when selecting lighting for your retail store:

High "color-rendering" lamps should be used. Whether selecting lighting for a grocery store or a department store, it is important for your contractor to choose lamps (light bulbs) that make colors appear as "natural" as possible. The measure to look for when selecting lamps that will render colors accurately is CRI (color rendering index). This is found on a lamp's packaging or in the manufacturer's catalog. CRI of lamps range from a low of 1 to high of 100. In retail lighting, your contractor should select lamps with a CRI of 80 or above. There are standard and halogen incandescent, fluorescent, and metal halide lamps that meet this CRI value.
Lighting fixtures should limit glare. For customers to comfortably examine merchandise and sales people to work without eye strain, your contractor should choose lighting fixtures carefully and install them properly. For a store's "general lighting," fixtures should be chosen that limit the shoppers' view of the lamp itself, such as louvers, baffles, and lenses. This cuts down on the glare (uncomfortable brightness) of these fixtures. For "accent lighting," lighting aimed directly at merchandise, lamps with "narrow" beams (often called "spot" lights) should be selected as well as fixtures in which the lamp is recessed or set-back from the fixture's opening. Also, your contractor should make sure this lighting is not aimed directly toward aisles or doorways where they could shine directly into shoppers' eyes.
Light should be distributed where it is needed. Many types of merchandise in a store are displayed vertically (hanging or on shelves). It is important for your contractor to select fixtures that will properly provide lighting on vertical surfaces. This can be done by using adjustable fixtures that can be aimed toward shelves or vertical displays, selecting ceiling-mounted fixtures that are designed to direct some light to the sides rather then directly down, or by incorporating lighting into display cases or shelving units. It is also important to make sure that the general areas in the store where people need to walk and move through displays are evenly lighted and appear bright to customers. Your contractor should make sure that the general lighting fixtures are installed in accordance with the manufacturer's "spacing criteria."
Lighting should draw customers to merchandise. One mistake that is often made in stores is to use "spot" or "accent" lighting, such as halogen reflector lamps, everywhere. These create a feeling of visual clutter and can be confusing to customers. Light can be a very effective way of drawing a customer's attention to areas of the store you want them move toward. For example, it is very effective to light important displays and sales counters to a higher level (sometimes as much as 5 times more light) than the general areas of the store. If your contractor limits accent lighting to these two store areas it will be much more effective in catching a customer's attention.