It is not necessary to be an expert designer to know that the composition of the windows, for a shop, represents an essential communication tool. In addition to the products on display, which clearly must be attractive to the customer, the scenography, the arrangement of the objects and, last but not least, the lighting must also be taken care of.
Light has a very important function which is to help attract people who are outside the store. Light must interact with the composition, enhancing it and must be able to convey the strengths of the goods on display, enhancing them. The lighting of the shop windows therefore also becomes a real communication tool.
And as such, it must be designed thoroughly and the devices capable of providing the best light output must be identified, case by case. Woe to cause glare or unpleasant light reflections: the potential customer could in fact move away and the shop could lose a precious buyer.
So let’s see what are the mistakes not to make when designing the lighting of a shop window and which tools to rely on.
The design, in fact, acquires primary importance and must be conducted starting from assumptions such as:
- How many times will the furniture in the window change over the course of the year?
- How much space is there in the false ceiling?
- What are the measures of the showcases?
- How many windows does the store have?
- Is the store located on a street in the historic city center or inside a shopping center or mall?
- In the latter case, does the lighting have to be subject to a specific regulation?
How to design the lighting of a shop window
Once the overall measurements of the space to be illuminated have been taken and the required level of lighting established, the system can be designed and the type of products to be installed can be established. For example, if the space in the false ceiling allows it, you can use recessed spotlights to ensure a cleaner aesthetic. If, on the contrary, there is insufficient space, it is better to prefer, depending on the depth of the showcase, the installation of one or more parallel Eurotrack tracks on the front side.
This second option, if on the one hand it is more visible than spotlights for shop windows, on the other hand, however, proves to be more versatile, since the tracks can be easily reconfigured every time the furniture in the window is changed.
To support and integrate the system, lateral sources can also be provided, mounted on the shoulders of the showcases. In this case, however, the lighting bodies must be kept in low voltage to ensure maximum safety and to be able to use very small spotlights even with intense flows.
A further precaution is to mount casings or strips in a customized finish to hide the spotlights. In this case, to avoid any pointing errors, we recommend the use of anti-glare accessories such as, for example, Honeycomb.
The use of lights and shadows
Perhaps it will seem counterintuitive, yet shadows also come in handy in lighting shop windows. In fact, they allow you to dose the lights and give depth to the exposure. In fact, too intense and uniform lighting risks flattening the communication of the window and depriving the composition of its emotional sphere.
To illuminate small objects such as shoes, bags and other fashion accessories, we recommend the use of adjustable spotlights with zoom. These products, with each refitting of the windows, allow you to very quickly adjust the width of the light beam, concentrating it where it is needed and emphasizing the light / shadow effect necessary to attract the attention of passers-by. Furthermore, their ease of use allows them to be used even by non-professionals.
LED lamps for shop windows
For years now, the most used shop window lights have been LED lights. If this technology has found such widespread use in so many lighting fields, the merit is due to its numerous and undeniable advantages. First of all, LEDs allow you to illuminate even very large spaces while using little electricity and developing an excellent flow of light.
Furthermore, the wide feedback obtained on the market by these lamps has meant that numerous improvements were made which also allowed to lower the costs of these products.
Finally, LED lights are also the most ecological, because they are easier to dispose of.
When using an LED lamp for shop window lighting, two parameters must be kept in mind: the color temperature and the desired color rendering. As for the first value, it must be remembered that the higher it is, the colder the light produced will be.
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