Retail interior design is all about only one goal, attracting the customers at the threshold of your store and influencing them to actually spend their time and money. Your store layout is one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal for making an incredible impact on your customers.
Top 7 Principles of a Great Retail Interior Design
1. Design and Layout
The design and Layout of the store should be tailored as per the product being sold. Moreover, it should be designed with both permanent and non-permanent design features that would make a store flexible enough to be changed and rearranged as per the needs of the customers and merchandise. In retail, it is imperative for 100% of the space to have a purpose. A tailored floor plan creates the circulation to control the traffic flow based on the psychology and desired movement plan of the customers. The floor plan must ensure that the customer moves through the entire space while also having guides to important displays and parts of the store.
Based on different requirements a store can have different floor plans viz. a straight plan, pathway plan, diagonal plan, curved plan, geometric or varied plan.
2. Shop Windows
One should never underestimate the power of visual merchandising in retail interiors. Shop windows are very important in order to attract customers to cross the threshold of a store. Shop windows should be the eye of the store and tell a great story while displaying the featured items at the heart of the display.
3. Appeal the Senses
Focusing on the way your store looks is just not enough. Apart from the visual appeal, your store should impact more senses of your customers. One should pay attention to the way a place smells. Ambient scents evoke memories and instill a feeling in your customers. Playing the right kind of music to appeal to the hearing senses will influence the purchase behavior of your customers and finally, by using certain textures and keeping your store neat and clean will appeal the sense of touch. If a store is able to interact with more senses it naturally will influence more customers to actually have a positive experience resulting in more engagement time and more business.
4. Lighting
Attention must be paid to create the right atmosphere with ambiance and functional lighting.
Lights should not be too bright and harsh and poor lighting can cause eye strain and uncomfortable shopping experience, therefore the ratio of luminance should decrease between selling areas. The next layer should complement and bring focus to the merchandise to balance out the overall lighting of the store while guiding customers to the right focus areas. Functional lighting such as guiding signs need to be installed at appropriate places for customers to enjoy hassle-free movement and guidance into the entire space.
5. Materiality
The choice of material used in the retail interior not only needs to be visually appealing but also be functional with minimum need for maintenance. Durable finishes of the materials are desirable to avoid early wear and tear as a result of a large number of footfalls in retail spaces. Keeping this in mind will lower the long-term maintenance cost of the space.
6. Visual Branding
Visual branding inside the store not only helps customers retain a memorable experience but also plays a role in ensuring that they will want to return. Exterior branding and signage should be creative and attractive and this consistency should be maintained in interior branding as well.
The branding should also provide important information about the display or merchandise to attract and guide the right customers meant for that area.
7. Perspective
A well-executed retail interior design is all about providing the customers right perspective by controlling the view that the customer will have of a particular retail space. An example would be a clear unobstructed view of the interior of the entire store from the exterior.
Retail designs are all about influencing customer behavior and experience that results in more engagement and spending. Navigating your way to that perfect plan and design requires a lot of thought process and experience. It is vital to get things right initially before the plan is executed, for once the place is operational, making any kind of amendments is a tedious and expensive task and might as well result in a significant amount of losses. Keeping this in mind, it is always a good idea to hire a professional to help you plan a perfectly functional and trendy retail space which not only translates into early success but also helps your business stand firmly in today’s competitive environment.
'Top 7 Principles of a Great Retail Interior Design'.
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