Lighting
Paul Symes, the visual merchandising manager for London’s Fortnum & Mason, has always had an obsessive interest in lighting and technical wizardry. His tips for ensuring a window is well lit are:
Ensure all lighting fixtures are cleaned and working before dressing a window.
While adjusting lighting, a simple way to see if the beam is focused on the correct product is to wave your hand in front of the lamp and see where the shadow falls.
Use lamps of the correct beam widths.
Have a supply of spare lamps on hand.
Check the window lighting during the day and at night.
Be certain that the light beams are aimed into the windows—not facing out toward the public, thus blinding potential customers.
A detail from a Harvey Nichols scheme shows how a narrow-beam pin spotlight can be used to highlight the mannequins, and in particular the makeup, carefully co-ordinated with the theme.
Lighting should never be an afterthought. The process of lighting a window should be planned at the same time as the window scheme (see the Lighting chart on page 203 for assistance).
A track system with adjustable lights offers the most flexibility in windows and gives the visual merchandiser the opportunity to use several different lighting fixtures, each of which will perform a different role within the display. Spots will highlight an individual piece of merchandise or mannequin, while floods will give an ambient light to the whole.
The wattage and beam width of a light can be baffling to a novice. The actual fixture is useless without the correct light. Many lighting fixtures can take a variety of lamps, but not all of them will be universally effective. The size of the beam width you require usually depends on the size of the grouping it is expected to highlight. A small piece of jewelry, for example, will only require a three-degree beam width; anything wider will illuminate the surrounding area. Large, deep windows may require flooding with a general wash of light before spotlights are used to highlight individual items. A run of windows should each have a similar quantity of light; a dark window placed in a run of ten will stand out for the wrong reasons, as will a bright window.
Color and the time of day also need to be taken into account when choosing lighting. Some colors absorb light and others will reflect it. If a light-absorbing color such as black or dark blue is being used, extra lighting may be required to compensate. Fabrics and carpet will also absorb a substantial amount of the lighting in a window.
Lighting used in the daytime can differ from the amount needed at night. In a bright window with the sun shining on it, more light will be required to compensate for the extra daylight. Less lighting, as strange as it may seem, is required at night because the windows will stand out against their dark surroundings—there is little other lighting to compete with. Many retailers have adopted a lighting system that can automatically adjust the lighting outputs, depending on the time of the day.
Theatrical lighting has been used to highlight the dramatic poses of these Adel Rootstein mannequins at the company’s showroom in New York, enabling visual merchandisers to imagine how effective they might look in their own windows.