In the three months following the reopening of non-essential shops at the end of April 2021, high street footfall increased to the highest levels since the onset of the pandemic just over a year earlier . Though the retail sector has had to rapidly adapt in the last two years, the figures are proof that efforts to entice shoppers instore are working.

Retail today is less about the products on the shelf, and increasingly about how the shopper is made to feel. A priority for retailers is to ensure customers feel safe, but it’s also vital to integrate fittings and fixtures which create an experiential environment, designed to ensure consumers engage with the products and services on offer.

Central to this is the use of lighting, and its immediate ability to influence a shopper’s experience in store. Able to act as both a practical tool and inspiring design feature, lighting can showcase the best features of a product while also acting as a guide to navigate people around a space. Additionally, lighting sets the tone and atmosphere of a shop and should also be demonstrative of the quality of products on offer. As such, retail lighting must be designed and installed to ensure the customer is able to find exactly what they’re looking for, while ensuring retailers gain a competitive advantage and entice new and repeat shoppers through the door.

Häfele recently launched its new Loox 5 lighting range for this specific purpose. Having had its internal components upgraded and distribution style changed, Loox 5 is even better suited to commercial and retail applications than its predecessor.

The wiring and connection capability within Loox 5 has jumped from 3.5amp to 5amp; improved drivers mean the lighting can be used 24 hours a day for up to 50,000 hours – and in some cases, 70,000 hours – without any noticeable reduction in performance. Meanwhile, the colour rendering index – a scale that rates an artificial white light source’s ability to accurately display colour – is above 90, meaning that during these 50,000+ hours there will be no difference in colour quality, making it a top choice for settings where colour accuracy is important like shop floors, display cabinets and fitting rooms.

Behind Loox 5 sits a plug-and-play Bluetooth mesh control system. While any typical Bluetooth-controlled fixture or fitting works from a one-to-one digital interaction, limiting control to within just a few metres, a mesh system creates more of a spider’s web of communication between all the components added to it, offering greater usability of lights across a much larger footprint.

To launch Loox 5, Häfele has started to tour the country in its brand new Loox Van. The refurbished Renault Relay is installed with the latest innovations from the range to offer merchants, architects, manufacturers, installers and shop fitters the chance to get up close with the products and explore its breadth of capabilities.

With Häfele’s team of lighting experts on hand to discuss the latest lighting trends and design advice, the Loox Van was developed to provide a mobile, accessible facility for the industry to improve their understanding of how lighting can support the retail sector, and how Häfele’s products and services can help them achieve more for their customers.

Further to launching Loox 5, Häfele has also announced its Lighting Design Service. It arms the industry with a free, value-added tool to ensure operators receive great-looking, holistic lighting solutions in their projects. Users can submit floor plans for public spaces like shopping centres or smaller, individual stores to the Lighting Design Service’s team who will then produce a creative and technical lighting scheme on their behalf, providing a bespoke layout, product list and priced quote – all free of charge. This can then be used together with Häfele to Order – a service that cuts, assembles, packages, labels and delivers products to specific requirements to save time during the installation process.

As consumers demand more from retailers to encourage them to remain on the high street, it’s vital to implement a lighting scheme that can adapt to each shopper’s purpose and provide a point of difference to what’s available online. Häfele’s new Loox 5 range makes that easier to achieve than ever before.