When considering the space, ambience and atmosphere within your customers home, lighting is a fundamental and often over looked aspect.
We have shared some of our tips on how to use lighting effectively to best advise your customers and get the best out of your products online & instore.
1. Get your customers to think where the light will be placed
When you are setting out your store displays or informing customers of your lighting products online & instore, get them to think about what activities take place in each room and what key features of the room they could highlight. By getting them to consider scale, lighting output and colour - the more suitable the product would be.
For example, we would recommend our Isla Table Lamp for the bedroom. Not only is it the perfect size for a bedside cabinet, it is also and available in a variety of calming pastel colours widely used within the bedroom.
Our “lifestyle” shots are extremely useful when trying to help promote the use of our products in each room online. You could even print these off to place along side your products in store or paint a picture using enticing descriptions of what effects the light would have in certain rooms.
The more information the customer has the less likely for returns once they realise the light isn’t suitable for their intended space!
2. Have a lighting plan
If your customer is starting from scratch or redecorating a room, create a mini brief or lighting plan that tackles the essentials. For a unique look you can mix and match two different lamps with similar colour or symmetry to give room a unique feel that looks well put together.
3. Use lighting to focus on your favourite area
Use lighting to focus on a feature wall or key object within your store. This rule also applies to your customers when highlighting their favourite piece of furniture of home accessory.
4. Layer up lighting
“Consider layering up the lighting so you can add and take away easily, giving the room maximum flexibility, throughout the day and year.” Torie Wilkinson (Klaus and Heidi). Help customers by providing and recommending lights that work well together. It is also useful to recommend lights that fulfill the 3 different effects – general lighting, task related lighting and mood lighting.
5. Don’t forget your electrical ceiling roses!
Your customer may invest in buying beautiful shades and pendants from you, however the effect is ruined with cheap old ceiling roses they may have up! We recommend our metal Ceiling Roses for an additional purchase.
6. Choose the right bulb
All our products come with the recommended bulb and maximum wattage information.
To better inform your customer here are some things to consider:
- How bright (wattage) do you/your customers need for the space?
- What atmosphere are you/they trying to achieve (bulb colour)
- Should energy efficiency be considered? All our products come with the maximum Eco Halogen, Energy saver and LED wattage information.
For more help view our Bulb guide below:
7. Spread out the wattage
Is your customer looking for 1 ceiling fitting? If it’s a large room would more fittings and/or wall lights be more appropriate? Trying to illuminate a whole large room with 1 or 2 lights is a recipe for a shadowy disaster!
8. Trends & Themes
Themes are a great for helping customers decide which lighting will suit their space. This can be done in many ways, please see the below points that we have found particularly useful in the past:
- Simply stating themes within your lighting department or on your website helps associate products to trends immediately.
- Creating room displays within your store with key theme elements/colours allows the customer to imagine that theme within their home easier
- Creating Pinterest boards that can be seen or accessed by your team and/or customers. It is also useful if you use your own products throughout these to help drive sales!
- Sending out key themes monthly in marketing mail shots
- Utilising social media such as Twitter and Facebook to inform customers of key trends
To help keep on top of seasonal trends, we send out monthly “Trend spotting” emails to our newsletter subscribers highlighting key trends to be aware of that month. Sign up to receive this information along with exclusive offers, new product alerts, company news and more! Simply visit our website and subscribe at the bottom of the page
