How Retail Dressing Room Lighting Affects Sales
It’s no secret that dressing room lighting gets a bad rap.
It’s what makes finding that rare flattering dressing room lighting such a
pleasant surprise. Here’s how and why you should make sure your dressing room
lighting is poised for sales success.
It probably doesn’t come as a surprise that flattering
dressing room lighting is more likely to result in sales. If customers like the
way they look, they’re more likely to buy the outfit they’re wearing. Two out
of three shoppers try clothing on before they purchase. In addition to
two-thirds of shoppers trying before buying, those purchases are also a little
more secure. Clothing that has been tried on before purchase is less likely to
be returned, so in actuality, clothing that has been tried on accounts for more
than two-thirds of net sales.
So, it’s been demonstrated that how clothing looks on a
customer affects their purchasing behavior. But how should you set up your
dressing room lighting to generate more sales?
Numerous studies on the subject have examined how dressing
room lighting not only affects purchases, but also customer’s emotional state
and their perceptions of their own appearance and their environment. In these
studies, customers tended to prefer how they looked in dressing rooms that
utilized frontal lighting. For dressing rooms in which harsh overhead lighting
was used, shoppers tended to disapprove of how the lighting cast shadows on
their face and body and tended to accentuate unflattering features on the
clothing they were trying on. Frontal lighting eliminated this issue.
In addition to being more flattering, frontal lighting makes
dressing rooms appear more spacious, which can influence shopper’s positive
association with the room. A negative perception of the atmosphere and space
can be distracting to shoppers and discourage them from staying in the store.
Proper lighting can boost customers’ moods, and sales.
Where your lighting is placed isn’t the only thing you
should focus on when designing dressing room lighting. It’s also important to
consider the color rendering index (CRI) of the light source you’re using.
Lights that do not accurately render colors can cause issues with customers’
perceptions of their appearance as well as the items of clothing they’re trying
on. Trying something on that looks one color in the store and a different color
outside of the store could lead to items being returned more frequently.
