Does Your Grocery Store’s Lighting Emphasize the Produce’s Color?

Grocery stores are segmented into different sections: the middle aisles of manufactured goods, the back sections of dairy, meat, and drinks, and then produce, bakery, and floral areas on opposite sides of the store. Usually, these sections are marked by signs and even different tiles to help guide shoppers. But those sections are also separated by different lighting styles, and that lighting plays a pivotal role in guiding shoppers, highlighting goods, and encouraging purchases. Here are two of the main factors for finding the right quality of light:

Choose your lights according to Correlated Color Temperature and Color Rendering Index.

The Correlated Color Temperature is based on the color of the light a lamp emits, and, when you’re using white light, enhances different colors and hues depending on its tone. The emittance is cool, which makes your store feel bigger, neutral, which promotes a feeling of well-being and makes customers more comfortable, or warm, which makes the setting feel smaller and more homey. Different lighting works well in different areas, even side by side, to create different feelings and highlight different products.

The Color Rendering Index measures how a light source renders the colors of lighted products. Some lights wash products out and make the colors fade, while others can create a high contrast for a focus on the products’ color. Color Rendering Index (CRI) is measured on a 0-100 scale, and using lights with a CRI between eighty and one hundred is best for a grocery because it makes colors look vivid and natural.

Different areas of a grocery store require different blends of lighting, and these two measures are critical for every display. Lighting the produce section with lights that have a poor CRI make the produce look less well-grown or healthy, regardless of the actual quality of the fruits and vegetables. If you want to emphasize a new organic display, placing lights with an even higher CRI than in the surrounding displays can make organic produce look even healthier and more nutritious.

When Your Business Is Manufacturing, The Lighting Needs To Be Excellent!

If You Don’t Think Lighting Has A Big Effect…..

Maybe it’s because the impact of poor lighting has not been fully realized. When updating our lighting to the best level, we’ll notice improvements in the following 4 areas:

Safety

The average manufacturing facility undoubtedly complies with all government safety regulations. (This article details OSHA’s lighting requirements). This compliance, however, probably doesn’t require optimal lighting. Logically, less than great lighting creates less than great safety. Which allows for excess workplace accidents. Yes, great lighting makes a manufacturing business as safe/efficient as possible.

Mood

A poorly lit work area carries a subliminal message of drudgery. A well-lit facility promotes a positive atmosphere of cutting-edge production. In other words, it’s where you’ll find the winning team. Improved morale is the intangible by-product.

Productivity

When a manufacturing business provides a premium workplace, it’s reasonable that productivity will reach its apex. It’s reasonable because a premium workplace can’t possibly provide an obstacle to peak performance. If production lacks, a properly illuminated facility is not the culprit.

Expense

Lighting improvements cut expenses in more ways than one. Increased productivity is, in effect, equal to reduced expense. Also, less workplace injuries equate to cutting unnecessary expense at an Olympic level. But, the obvious savings come in the form of state-of-the-art lighting fixtures and lamps. Modern lighting technology operates at a tremendously low cost. Today’s lighting lineup is amazingly energy-efficient.

Safer Lighting for Parking Garages

Consider the impression that your business creates when its customers or clients drive into a poorly-lit parking lot. Your customers will feel uncomfortable with dark spot and shadows in your lot and will rush to get into a better-lit location. When the customer leaves, he or she might feel equally unsettled by the prospect of walking through dimly-lit rows of cars. Your business can make its customers feel safer and more at ease while simultaneously saving money and improving customer safety by installing modern LED lighting in its parking facilities.

The existing metal halide or high-pressure sodium lighting fixtures in your lot are effective for good illumination in their immediate vicinities, but that illumination is uneven across large areas that are typical in parking lots. LED parking lot lighting gives you unparalleled control over the distribution of lighting in your lot, regardless of whether the lot is open or a multi-tiered parking structure. You might try to over-light your lot with older lighting technology, but doing so will inevitably affect your neighbors and add to lighting pollution.

Further, your existing lighting technology is wasting money, both in terms of operating capital and maintenance. LED parking lot lighting fixtures can generate the same or better illumination as traditional outdoor lighting with less than half of the electrical energy input. You will see immediate benefits from LED parking lot lights in terms of lower electricity utility bills. LED parking lot lights also continue to generate high quality light for up to 50,000 or more hours of use. Your parking lot lighting maintenance costs will also go down when you install safer LED parking lot lighting.

Perhaps most critically, your customers and clients will appreciate your well-lit parking lot either with a conscious feeling of safety as they move from their vehicles and into your business, or subconsciously with an improved sense of security as they are able to see all areas of your lot with no shadows or dark spots where imagined dangers might be lurking.