Great lighting is a positive sales tool that attracts customers and moves merchandise by enhancing the selling environment and product appearance.

When used correctly, lighting can create a pleasant shopping atmosphere that will foster both spontaneous and repeat sales in a store. If you want to brighten up your sales, you must "lighten up" with the right light sources.

There are three keys in lighting stores. You can remember them as the "three As of lighting:"

• Atmosphere

  This creates a visually stimulating environment that makes customers feel comfortable and gives them the desire to stay longer in the store. This should be a very subtle element. When it is done incorrectly, everything in the store will look flat and pale, and customers will notice.

• Attraction

  Great lighting can be used to direct a customer's attention. It can also be used to help identify a particular department.

• Appraisal

Quality lighting allows a customer to easily "evaluate" the merchandise. This is especially important with the aging baby-boomer generation-most of whom cannot see as easily in lower lighting levels. Great lighting will also present gift merchandise in its proper color.

The sole purpose is to provide an optimized lighting level that makes the entire store visible. A customer should be able to pick up any book and read it easily. The worst thing a retailer can do is use "cool white" fluorescent tubes. Unfortunately, too many retailers do. The problem with cool white is that it doesn't reproduce colors in their true rendering. It washes out color and makes a store look uninviting.

David T. David Amster is president of Integra Interactive and an associate member of the International Association of Lighting Designers.

Read the complete article in the April/May 2006 issue of The Church Bookstore, http://www.thechurchbookstore.com/a.php?ArticleID=12699

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