Illuminating your showroom in a way that creates an exciting experience for your customers and maximizes sales is very complex. The position of the lighting, the color and source, the fixtures themselves, and more need to work in concert to establish an ideal buying experience for your customers. But, unless you’re a lighting designer, you probably don’t have all of the info you need to get started.
Keep reading to find five essential tips for developing the best lighting possible at your dealership’s showroom.
5 Tips for Showroom Illumination
1 Make Your Brand Stand Out
Now that buyers can browse and compare cars online without leaving their homes, the showroom is much more important for differentiating your brand from others. When your customer enters your dealership, they should have a positive, memorable experience they can associate with your brand. Quality lighting design goes a long way in creating this experience. Customers appreciate a bright, exciting, welcoming environment, and when they are in it, they are more likely to make a purchase. Consider using LEDs, which give you more flexibility to experiment with the controllable light, color, concealed linear light, and luminous surfaces they need to create an exciting, memorable experience for your customers.
2 Flexibility is Key
If business is booming, the cars at your dealership aren’t there for very long. Cars are sold and taken home, new models come in, and along with those new models come redesigns of your space for new advertising campaigns, special sales, and more. Your dealership’s lighting design needs to be flexible to accommodate all of this change. This means your lighting needs to be controllable and adjustable. Try installing luminaires with tunable color temperature. Some models can be tuned from either 2200K (very warm) to 6500K (very cool) along with lumen.
3 Prioritize CRI
You sell cars in virtually every color to meet the needs of all the shoppers that walk through your showroom doors. So, with so many different colored products to display, your lights must complement each car, regardless of its paint job.
A sub-par color rendering index (CRI) that highlights some colors and washes out others just won’t do. Make sure you check the CRI before buying a fixture and don’t settle for anything below 90. If you have time, try the fixture out in your space before you purchase, so you know exactly how the lights will look in your showroom.
4 Strategically Position Your Lights
The new car smell, the sound of the engine, and the sparkle of the paint create a highly memorable experience for your shoppers. Ensure those memories are positive by showing your cars in the best possible light. One way to accentuate your cars’ appearance is to position your lights in a way that complements the vehicles and reduces glare. You will also want to consider how daylight affects the space and how you can use diffuse and point sources to create ambient light and sparkle.
5 Select the Right Luminaires
Make sure your luminaires match the look and feel of your showroom or blend into the background and do not distract your customers. Picking aesthetically pleasing luminaires will increase the feeling of luxury in your showroom and give your cars a better shot at being sold.
Ready to improve the lighting design at your showroom? Speak to one of our Automotive Lighting Experts today.
