Lighting plays a crucial role in supermarket design. Today, customers visit supermarkets not just to shop, but also to enjoy a comfortable and pleasant environment. This means supermarkets need to offer more than just products—they need to create a relaxing atmosphere as well.
Different lighting effects can create very different psychological impressions, which can influence customer behavior. That’s why smart lighting design is essential—not only to improve the shopping experience but also to boost buying interest and drive sales.
Supermarket Lighting Design Principles
Functionality
- Lighting Needs: Ensure sufficient lighting in all areas of the supermarket, including shelves, products, and checkout counters, to help customers easily view and identify items.
- Highlight Key Areas: Utilize various lighting methods and brightness levels tailored to the characteristics of each area to effectively emphasize key products and direct customer attention.
Comfort
- Glare Control: Properly control the angle and brightness of lighting fixtures to avoid glare and ensure a comfortable shopping experience.
- Appropriate Color Temperature: Different color temperatures can create different psychological effects and moods.
Aesthetics
- Consistent Style: Maintain a consistent lighting design that matches the overall interior style of the supermarket, enhancing its overall image.
Lighting types in supermarket lighting design
General Lighting: The main purpose is to provide a bright and uniform environment in the supermarket, ensuring that customers can clearly see the products. Fixtures with high color rendering (Ra > 85), such as LED downlights and panel lights, are commonly used to maintain even and glare-free lighting. These lights are typically installed recessed in the ceiling, and the quantity of fixtures is based on the store’s size and layout.
Accent Lighting: Used to highlight specific products and attract customer attention. Adjustable fixtures like spotlights or track lights are generally used to create focused, brighter areas. These lights are usually installed above shelves or display stands, with beam angles and brightness tailored to the product features and placement.
Decorative Lighting: Aims to create a pleasant shopping atmosphere and enhance the overall customer experience. Fixtures such as neon lights or LED strips are often used for their creative and aesthetic appeal, producing unique visual effects. These are typically installed at store entrances, aisles, or rest areas, using color changes, flashing effects, and dynamic lighting to create different moods.
Types of Lighting Fixtures Used for Different Areas
Entrance+pathway
Entrance Lighting is the supermarket’s face, must balance visual appeal and safety. Maintain 500–800 lux illumination to ensure logos, signage, and pathways are clearly visible, welcoming customers while prioritizing safety.
The office area
The office area generally contains the daily work of the supermarket management office and other personnel. LED lamps are required to meet general lighting needs while protecting the eyesight of workers. The color temperature is 6000-6500K cold white, so that people can stay awake and focus on work.
Cargo warehouse
The warehouse of the supermarket brings together almost all categories of goods. The application environment is more complicated and requires the use of LED batten or high bay lights with an IP65 waterproof rating and above. If the installation height of the supermarket lamps is low, LED batten is more suitable. High bay lights are suitable for installation in warehouses with a height of more than 5 meters. The color temperature needs to use the middle and high color temperature of 4000-6500K, which is convenient for the staff and clean.
The shelf area
The shelf area is the main area of supermarket merchandise sales. It needs to take into account the lighting in all directions so that all merchandise has the opportunity to be seen and purchased by consumers. Therefore, shelf area lighting is the key area of supermarket lighting. Due to the close distance between the shelves, the lighting should avoid shadows and make it easy to find products. The aisle between the shelves can use 4000-6500K color temperature linear lights or LED batten as the main lighting, while auxiliary track lights can be used for local and accent lighting of the goods on the shelves.
The fruit and vegetable area
The lighting in this area must not only ensure the perfect presentation of the goods but also consider the impact of temperature on the shelf life of the goods. Here, LED lighting with low heat generation should be selected as far as possible to prevent the moisture loss of fresh vegetables and fruits, and to maintain their freshness. For the fruit area, usually, a medium beam spotlight can create a good display effect, highlighting the shape, material, and color of the fruit. Then use narrow beam spotlights to highlight the products you want to display or promote sales. It is suitable to use 3000K warm color lamps with high CRI, which can better restore the true color of fruits, and increase the color value of fruits and consumers’ desire to buy.
The freezing area
The temperature in this area is generally low, and there is a lot of water vapor around. From a safety perspective, low-voltage LED lighting is generally used, and the IP grade should be IP54 at least. For the freezer, hidden LED linear lighting can be used. For the seafood freezing area, it is suitable to use track lights with a color temperature above 6500K with high CRI for lighting. The higher the color temperature, the more vivid the color of the seafood products.
Promotion area
Promotional zones serve two key purposes: boosting sales through discounts and creating an “affordable” brand image to drive customer loyalty. To achieve this, the area must immediately grab attention. Beyond eye-catching displays, lighting plays a critical role—sales zones should be 20% brighter than surrounding areas to stand out.
The check-out area
The checkout area should highlight the visual guidance to consumers so that they can easily find the area and complete the purchase. Usually, this area has a lot of people, and the cashier is generally always working at high intensity. It is most important for the cashier to clearly see the goods and coins, and at the same time to ensure that consumers can easily read the content on the cashier slip. Therefore, 6000-6500K color temperature LED batten, LED panel lights are very suitable for installation in this area.
| Area | Lumen Flux | CCT | Recommended LED Lights |
| Entrance | 500-800lux | 3000-4000K | led strip, led neon lights,led downlights |
| Fruit and vegetables | 300-500lux | 3000-3500K | Track light, downlight |
| Fish | 300-500Lux | 6000-8000K | Linear, track light |
| Shelf | 500-1000lux | 4000-6500K | panel, track, linear light |
| Promotion | 1200-1500lux | 2500K | rgb strip, track light |
| Pathway | 300-600lux | 3000-4000K | downlight or track light |
| Check-out | 300-500lux | 4500-6500K | panel light or ceiling light |
Future Trends in Supermarket Lighting
- Smart Lighting: Smart lighting systems can automatically adjust brightness based on natural light and customer traffic, saving energy. They also track real-time customer numbers, helping merchants optimize product layouts and promotions.
- Li-Fi Integration: Use LED lights for high-speed data transmission to guide shoppers via smartphone apps.Circadian Lighting: Adjust color temperature throughout the day to align with human circadian rhythms
Conclusion
Generally, for supermarket lamps, high CRI is necessary, which is conducive to restoring the true color of the goods and improving the consumer experience of customers. Supermarkets must not only provide goods that people need but also create a comfortable and casual shopping atmosphere. Good lighting can not only improve the decoration level, make customers feel comfortable, stay longer, and promote an increase, but also save a large amount of electricity bills and reduce the operating cost. Emergency Lighting: Install emergency lighting systems to provide illumination in case of power outages or emergencies.
Hello, customers
My name is Ricky Wang, I’m the business manager of GRNLED. I have been in LED lights industry for more than 10 year. Feel free to contact us. I’m happy to provide you the best service and products.
Email: info@grnled.com | WeChat: ledfixture
