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Ask a Designer, Commercial, Interior Design

Zombie Lighting

What is with dressing rooms that have horrible top lighting? Isn't the point to make you feel like you look really good, and should, therefore, buy the clothes you're trying on? It's so easy to avoid. Don't make this mistake in your shop!

Jeff Pelletier is the Managing Principal and Founder of Board & Vellum, an architecture, interior design, and landscape architecture firm in Seattle, Washington.
Jeff Pelletier
July 4, 2011

While shopping for clothes last week in NYC I was confronted by something that drives me insane. I actually hate shopping so it is pretty rare when I see this or it would probably be vaulted to the top of my "things to never do list". When trying on clothes, you'd think that the merchant would want you to look great in whatever you're trying on. Put you in the best light so to speak (there's some actual merit to that throwaway statement). So what do I look like in this particular New York City merchant that is hoping to get me to purchase their clothes?

This.

Holy. Mother. Of. God.

I just don't get it. Someone was PAID to make me look like this!!! Wow.

There's a whole post due on lighting. It's one of the most important things you can do in any environment to make your space really shine. (Yup, that was a horrible pun. I hope you're keeping score.) But lighting in clothing stores is HUGE. It literally can influence sales. There's really just one simple rule yet it is missed all the time.

Light ON the face not above. Lighting above makes you look like a zombie. It makes you look heavier (the other photo I took was even less flattering), hides detail, and just looks sad. I don't know about you but when I want to buy some clothes, I at least have an expectation to not look like a fat zombie.

I know, I know, us architects want so much.

So tell me, what stores do it right and which ones miss the mark?

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