Track lighting is essential to any retail store or showroom's lighting design. It not only highlights key areas and products, but it also creates an ambiance that can enhance the customer's shopping experience. Choosing the proper track lighting can be daunting, especially if it's your first time. This guide will walk you through the essential factors to consider when selecting track lighting for your retail store or showroom. We'll discuss the different types of track lights, the benefits of each, and how to determine the appropriate brightness for your space. By the end of this guide, you can choose the best track lighting for your retail store or showroom.
Retail Lighting Design: Fundamentals
Retail lighting design is a crucial aspect of creating an enjoyable and engaging customer shopping experience. When designing a retail space, several key principles must be considered.
One of the most important principles is layering. You can create a visually appealing and dynamic retail space by combining different lighting techniques and fixtures. This can include ambient lighting, which provides general illumination for the space, and task lighting, which is focused on specific areas or tasks such as product displays or checkout counters. Accent lighting can also highlight specific products or areas, drawing the customer's attention and creating visual interest.
Another important consideration when designing retail lighting is color rendering. Choosing light fixtures with high-color rendering is essential to ensure that merchandise appears true to life and attractive to customers. This is particularly important compared to natural light, as customers may be more likely to notice any discrepancies in color when viewing products under artificial lighting.
Additionally, it is essential to consider energy efficiency when selecting lighting for your retail store or showroom. LED lights are an excellent option to achieve this, as they offer long-lasting, energy-efficient lighting with minimal heat output. They also come in a wide range of color temperatures, allowing you to create the desired ambiance for your space.
By considering these fundamental principles, you can create a retail lighting design that will enhance your merchandise and provide a memorable shopping experience for your customers. This is achieved through using a combination of lighting techniques, high-color rendering fixtures, and energy-efficient lighting options such as LED lights.
Benefits of LED Track Lights for Retail Stores and Showrooms
LED track lighting is versatile and can be used for various purposes in a retail space. It comes in different designs, colors, and styles, making it suitable for many retail spaces. With this technology, you can create general lighting throughout the space or focus specific lights on the track to create task or accent lighting. Additionally, you can easily change the areas of focus as desired. Moreover, track lighting can also have some decorative value due to the wide range of options available.
Customizable
Track lighting systems are versatile and can be easily integrated into any size, height, or shape of a room. This allows you to use light to follow the style of your brand and dose the lighting in a diversified way, even within a single room. This versatility means you can customize solutions with cost efficiency, encouraging store managers to be creative.
Uniform Light Distribution
Track lighting can distribute light evenly in space by allowing the lights to be angled from 90° to 270° depending on the shape and position, ensuring that the environment is evenly illuminated.
Easy to Direct and Create a Focus
Track lighting plays a significant role in emphasizing merchandise, creating a focal point, and showcasing the best features of a product. Accent lighting is the crucial element of layered lighting design in merchandising lighting applications. It establishes the importance, enhances the prominence, and elevates the attributes of merchandise through luminance contrast. Accent lighting concentrates beams of light on the center of attraction to create a strong focal effect, increasing customers' attention. A 5:1 ratio of accent lighting to general illumination makes merchandise stand out, highlighting the product's shape, texture, finish, and color. To bring out details in dark merchandise or add sparkle to jewelry and crystal, strong contrasts, such as a 15:1 or 30:1 illuminance ratio, are used. In addition to reinforcing design aesthetics and revealing the true character and quality of merchandise, the luminance contrast also establishes a hierarchy of importance on the merchandising arena or selling floor.
Energy-saving
LED track lighting is a highly energy-efficient option that can reduce energy consumption by up to 90% compared to traditional bulbs while still providing superior performance.
Dimmable
LED track lighting now comes with dimmable options, allowing greater control over brightness and ambiance. Mains dimmable spotlights are also available and can reduce energy consumption while being compatible with many circuit track lighting systems.
Perfect for High Ceilings
LED track lighting is a fantastic choice for illuminating large, high-ceiling rooms. Its versatility and energy efficiency make it a popular choice for various applications. In addition, it can be installed at an optimal height, even in very high environments, by suspending the tracks from cables. This means that it can provide bright, even lighting to a room without needing multiple light sources, which can be both bulky and challenging to install. Furthermore, LED track lighting is available in various styles and finishes, so it can be customized to fit any aesthetic. Whether you're looking for a sleek, modern look or a more traditional feel, there's an LED track lighting option that's right for you.
Easy to Install
Retail store track lighting is an effective solution for illuminating high-ceiling rooms and has many benefits, including easy installation and minimal disruption as a retrofit option.
Types of Shop Track Lights
Surface Mounted
LED surface track lighting is mounted directly on the ceiling or walls and can be easily installed wherever needed, making it a minimally invasive process. The track has different lengths and can be cut to fit your measurements. For longer lengths, tracks can be joined together using a coupler. Surface-mounted shop track light can be used to light objects from different angles, making it a versatile option for retail space.
Suspended
Popular in retail and commercial spaces with high ceilings, suspended track lighting allows the lights to be lowered closer to products or areas that need to be illuminated. This can be achieved using suspension wire kits or fixed threaded rod kits. This type of mounting also provides an attractive industrial finish to the space. LED Lights Direct offers a range of magnetic track pendants that can be easily installed on our track lighting systems. Suspended track lighting can also be cut and installed to make any length, rectangle, square, or shape required.
Recessed
Recessed track lighting is an excellent choice for spaces with low ceilings, as it can provide a subtle and seamless solution that blends well with the ceiling surface. The lighting of this type can be mounted on the ceiling, with the track being recessed to minimize its visual impact. One of the key benefits of using recessed track lighting is that it creates a feeling of spaciousness in a room, as it does not take up valuable floor or wall space. Furthermore, recessed track lighting can offer various lighting options, from spotlighting individual features or objects to providing ambient lighting for an entire room. While it may be more expensive to install than surface-mounted options, the long-term benefits of recessed track lighting can be well worth the investment.
How to Use Tracks in Different Areas of Retail Stores?
Proper lighting is a crucial component in retail stores or showrooms. It not only creates an inviting atmosphere but also highlights the merchandise on display. The lighting should be differentiated for each area while maintaining an overall aesthetic that is unique. One way to achieve this is by using track lighting. By installing a metal guide on the ceiling or wall with individual spotlights mounted on it, lighting designers can create different levels of light in different areas of the store. This approach provides greater versatility and ensures the appropriate level of lighting for each space.
After taking measurements and determining the required level of lighting, the designer can choose the appropriate products to install. While recessed lights can provide a clean aesthetic, they are sometimes not feasible due to insufficient space in the false ceiling. In such cases, track systems prove to be a preferable option. While track systems may be more visible than recessed spotlights, they offer greater flexibility and can be easily reconfigured to accommodate changes in furniture or displays.
Shop windows are a crucial element of a retail store or showroom, as they are the first point of contact with potential customers. The lighting used in these windows plays an important role in attracting and engaging passers-by and can ultimately determine whether they enter the store or not. Track lighting is an excellent option for shop windows as it can be easily reconfigured to accommodate changes in displays or furniture. By using track lighting, you can ensure that your shop window communicates with potential customers and creates a positive first impression.
Light beams from luminaires should be directed toward the inside of the store in order to avoid dazzle customers. Install a track line about 15 cm from window glass to avoid shining light into customers' eyes. The optics (beam angle) to be used are affected by the installation height, which determines the corners' tightness. The goal of the lighting is to focus well on the display goods, preventing annoying reflections. Therefore, the higher the installation altitude, the tighter the corners must be.
In order to integrate the system, lateral sources can be used and mounted on the shoulders of the showcases. However, it's important to keep the lighting bodies at a low voltage to ensure safety and allow for the use of small spotlights, even with intense flows. By using showroom track lighting in retail stores, different areas can be highlighted. One such area is internal displays, which often change according to the season or market needs. These displays require lighting that is in tune with the rest of the store. Since special tables are often used to showcase new merchandise, and they are not always oriented or positioned in the same way, track lights offer the flexibility to ensure the right lighting is achieved. With the use of track lighting, retail stores and showrooms can create a unique and inviting atmosphere that highlights their merchandise while still maintaining a cohesive look and feel.
