How Do You Experience Color When You’re Shopping?
WEIRD QUESTION?
We Don’t Think So.
You probably think about where you want to go, how much you want to spend (and if you need new shoes…). But have you thought about how the color of the lighting in the store affects how the product you are going to buy looks when you look at yourself in the dressing room mirror? Do you sometimes notice that your own skin tone looks a little different in the dressing room too? How can you really know if these new clothes will look any good on you when you leave the store, or if those pants will look at all the same out in the sunlight? Ever found and tried on the perfect pair of black pants, only to find out when you got home that they were in fact really dark blue? Ever spent an hour getting a makeover in a high end cosmetics store or navigated the labyrinth of department store counters looking for the perfect shade of foundation and when you looked at yourself out in the sunlight, clearly the skin care consultant missed your olive undertones!? Cosmetics are very personal, and sometimes cannot be returned!
Surely one of the quickest ways to lose a woman’s brand loyalty is to sell her something that doesn’t make her feel fabulous. How do these experiences add up, considering you know you are not color blind? So much time and money is wasted, and it’s all because of poorly designed and apathetic lighting layouts. Adding insult to injury, you have to trudge back into the store to attempt to return your ill-purchased products, so you can beg for your money back! Who has time for that? What kind of experience was it? Good? Bad? Demeaning? For sure, irritating! Not getting what you paid for really affects your opinion of the retailer, to be sure. They should care more deeply about your shopping experience, about how you spend your time and about how you spend your money. Isn’t this a reflection of the retailer’s consideration? Would companies that care really allow bad lighting to poorly showcase their products in their dressing rooms or on their sales floors? No way. If a company really feels responsible for the customer experience, would they knowingly hire lighting consultants and electrical engineers who don’t know or care about the customer experience? We don’t think most retailers understand the science behind their lighting. And why would they?
At Dialectic, this is part of how we think. We use the colors of lighting to tell stories. The levels and placement of lighting in dressing rooms must teach and guide with all of the care and consideration of the best store team members. Consumers have the right to know that what they are looking at in the mirror is an accurate representation of what those pants or that dress will look like then they get them home. Taking the time and using our expertise to really get to know what kind of lighting would complement the products, shows us the best way to correctly design the lighting for a space.
To us, it is the greatest responsibility to honor the customer’s time, money and experience in the store. It is part of making the shopper feel welcome and comfortable. It’s what we do. We are constantly looking for ways to live up to our commitment of “Perfecting Comfort to Optimize Human Experience” in every building and retail space we design.