Designing lighting for retail spaces

The key considerations when designing lighting for retail and how this differs depending on the type of outlet.

The word retail probably conjures up thoughts of high street shops and supermarkets but of course it covers any premises that sells good to the public – including car showrooms.

And, like all retail establishments, car showrooms need to consider the overall look and ambience of their sales areas to entice customers in, create the right atmosphere, show the products off to their best and allow ease of movement around the premises. There is no doubt that lighting plays a key role in all of this.

In general, retail lighting combines different forms of ambient, accent, task and decorative lighting, to create the optimum solution.

In a car showroom, creating the perfect customer experience for the vehicle display area requires a carefully thought-out and well-designed process to provide a qualitative and quantitative illuminated space, to allow customers to clearly view every detail of the vehicles, as well as offering an exciting and invigorating environment which encourages purchase.

Bassadone Motors in Gibraltar, a distributor of major automotive brands including KIA, VW, Honda, Lexis, Fiat, Jeep and Alfa Romeo, recently moved into its new state-of-the-art showroom, Bassadone Autoworld.

Creating the perfect customer experience for the showroom project requires a carefully thought-out and well-designed enhance the visual appearance of the vehicle’s highly reflective surfaces, whilst still allowing each of the different brands being displayed to retain their individual identity.

Ansell specified stunning linear Vasco LEDs, suspended to provide ambient illumination and bring the showroom to life. The Vasco was selected for its opal diffuser which provides optimal light uniformity and bi-directional light output, and used in combination with Three Circuit Unity 3 LEDs to emphasise certain features of the vehicles. The track mounted spotlights anti-glare design allows them to create sparkle whilst also providing visual comfort.

Elsewhere in the showroom the Krait 24V LED Plug and Play flexible strip added stunning illumination to the refreshments area while the sleek modern polycarbonate moulded decorative twin spot Condor features individual adjustable LED arrays to allow individual areas to be highlighted.