The right lighting recipe: The secret ingredient to the ultimate experience

Retail environments are evolving fast. With online channels offering convenience and endless choice, physical stores must deliver compelling reasons for customers to enter, engage, and purchase. 

For retailers, lighting should be treated as an active contributor to customer behaviour and commercial performance. Retailers who integrate evidence-based lighting solutions are likely to see higher engagement and a potentially positive impact on sales.

Studies of retail design often focus on singular elements, such as store layout, failing to acknowledge that shopping is always a multisensory, holistic experience. A 2025 study by the University of Kent sought to change this, examining flagship retail environments on Oxford Street. The research analysed atmospherics such as lighting, layout, flow, and sensory cues alongside observed shopper behaviour. 

In certain stores, lighting reinforced brightness, colour, and product visibility, contributing to perceptions of energy, enjoyment, and immersion. By contrast, other leading brands installed lighting that supported efficient, task-focused shopping. Shoppers were willing to accept a less enjoyable environment when their goal was rapid product acquisition. For retailers, this highlights that lighting should align with store purpose and brand positioning rather than follow generic standards.

For supermarkets, too, the situation is no different. For instance, there is abundant evidence that LED lighting enhances the appearance of fresh foods on supermarket shelves and helps to prevent discoloration. Online experiences can’t compete with the pleasure of a well-stocked and beautifully presented produce department: the colours, the textures, the aromas. Shoppers naturally associate the look of fresh produce with its taste, and they know from experience that if food looks good, it will most likely taste good as well. For these reasons, the fresh food section is often the main reason why a shopper chooses to make a trip to the supermarket or to choose one supermarket over another.

In short, lighting can play a crucial role in defining the customer experience inside a store. The following sections will show how the right lighting strategies can improve store atmosphere, drive customer loyalty, and ultimately encourage repeat visits. Key takeaway: Adopting tailored lighting solutions directly supports a better retail experience.

A balancing act for retailers

While lighting makes a huge impact on how a customer feels inside a store, it is also a foundational element of retail design that shapes experience, perception, and behaviour. Thoughtful lighting schemes play a crucial role, from reducing glare and contrast to enabling flexible, calming atmospheres for people with different sensory preferences. 

In retail settings like showrooms, lighting is more than just functional; it is a powerful tool that shapes the shopping journey, enhances brand perception, and drives sales. A well-designed lighting concept not only highlights products and their details but also evokes emotions and transforms your store into an immersive, inspiring retail experience.​The right light sets the mood and reinforces brand identity, bringing vibrancy and creating a more premium look and feel.

For a fashion retailer, specifically, despite the increasing digital experiences in today’s world, shoppers still want to see, touch and even smell products in the real world. The challenge for retailers is to give shoppers an experience that can’t be matched online. The right lighting recipe ensures fabrics appear as they are, preventing colour distortion. The right light can also enhance contrast between colours and whites, revealing new depths of colour for a more saturated, vibrant fashion experience. Or deliver stronger whites in a cooler ambiance as preferred by sporting goods retailers and enhance the overall shopping experience. ​

For a supermarket, creating the perfect ambiance in its fresh food departments is a balancing act. Shoppers want a sensory experience, and creating the right atmosphere in the fresh food areas is key to achieving this. Take, for instance, the PLUS supermarket in the Netherlands, which has installed NatureConnect, a lighting innovation that brings daylight indoors. Signify NatureConnect mimics the experience of natural daylight in the supermarket. It enhances the experience of fresh fruit and vegetables. This way, customers discover fresh, colourful, healthy, and local products in an environment that feels like the outdoors, making the shopping experience more exciting!

Consumers also demand a broad assortment of ultra-fresh foods as an important component of a healthier lifestyle. Retailers want to meet these customer expectations by offering a wide range of fresh food products, but they also need to minimise losses and waste. Lighting plays a crucial role in how food looks - and how appetising it feels. Our indoor food light recipes use advanced spectral engineering to enhance colour, texture, and freshness, making every product look irresistible. By tailoring light to specific food categories, these recipes go beyond simple illumination to create an atmosphere that stimulates appetite and builds trust in quality. For example, Food WarmWhite enhances food presentation in bakery and cheese environments, while Food PremiumRed enhances the presentation of fresh meats, whereas Food FreshSeafood delivers cold white light (5000 K) to enhance the freshness and visual appeal of fish and seafood, emphasising its natural brightness, colour contrast, and surface texture. 

Albert Heijn XL in the Netherlands is using smart LED lighting to enhance the store experience. The lighting plan inside the store is particularly innovative compared to other supermarkets because Fresh food light recipes are used to enhance food preservation and presentation, extending shelf life and ensuring food always looks its best.

The possibilities are many

The right lighting coupled with controls can create wonders. From way finding to radically reduced energy consumption, the possibilities are many. These are made possible by Interact Retail, a system that brings lighting together with data and the IoT, to create spaces that adapt to retailer needs, making spaces more efficient, connected, and sustainable.