Visual Merchandising Display - Fairchild Books

Figure 4.6 Rows of round bulbs are lined up over the runway in the
center of this women’s shop and, along with some recessed floods
in the cut out circles in the dropped ceiling panel, serve as the
primary light source. The spotlights, on tracks that run from the front
to the rear of the store, highlight and accentuate the merchandise
display on or off of the wall. Lime, Toronto. Design: GHA Design
Studios, Montreal.
Figure 4.7 The trend toward blacked out or very dark retail spaces
accented only by sharp, bright spots of light is illustrated here. The
lighting is almost all accent lighting, with the light on the product and
none on the setting. Metal halides are used almost exclusively, except
for the fluorescent tubes used to wash the walls of the recessed
areas. Levi’s, Berlin. Design: Checkland Kindleysides, London.
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P a r t 1 : G e t t i n G S ta r t e d — V i S u a l M e r c h a n d i S i n G a n d d i S P l ay B a S i c S
Floodlights are also incandescent bulbs, but they usually
have frosted glass envelopes, or enclosures, and are less
concentrated, having a wider beam spread than spotlights.
Incandescent bulbs can be set into recessed high-hat
fixtures in the ceiling, clustered in chandeliers, or hung as
droplights. They can be mounted into housings that ride
back and forth on ceiling tracks and can be directed, or
focused, on merchandise or displays. Bare bulbs, silverbottomed
bulbs, 5-inch globelike bulbs, or tiny, round
complexion bulbs can be decoratively lined up, clustered, or
“polka dotted” on the ceiling to please the eye, add charm
to the design scheme, and “stroke” the merchandise. (See
Figures 4.6–4.8.)
High-Intensity Discharge (HID)
Lighting
The HID lamp, which is very energy efficient, is becoming
a strong contender in the field of general, overall store
lighting, in some cases replacing the fluorescent with its
long and readily apparent fixtures. HIDs are relatively
small in size (compared with fluorescent lamps) and will,
like incandescents, provide shadows and highlights.
The mercury-type HID may be too green, the metalhalide-type
may appear too blue, and the sodium type is
quite yellow, but new developments are producing warmer
and more flattering types of light. General Electric’s Multi-
Vapor is an improved metal-halide-type lamp that produces
a light similar to a standard coolwhite fluorescent, which is
satisfactory in some areas. It is still cooler and bluer than an
incandescent lamp, however. Ceramalux has a high-pressure
sodium lamp (HPS), which works well at the warm
end of the color wheel, but it is still yellower than an incandescent
lamp.
Incandescent spotlighting can be used to accent and
highlight with HID overall lighting but may require colored
filters (like a pale, “daylite” filter) to go with a MultiVapor
arrangement so that the different types of light do not jar
each other. The Ceramalux provides a warm ambience and
mixes well with warm white deluxe fluorescent or with
regular incandescent. However, because HID lamps do