They can look fancy or playful, futuristic or cosy, avant-garde or vintage. Those who go shopping today step into a new world each time they enter a store. One shop’s merchandise rests on rough wooden palettes. Another hangs its wares in overseas travel trunk. There are also the stacks of shoeboxes in the open trailer of a small lorry while the next shop uses a tower built of champagne glasses as shelving.

Some stores vie for attention with their wild-patterned wallpapers while others rely on a distanced, slick and simple look. While in one shop marble, fireplace and leather armchairs invite visitors on a time journey into the 19th century, the next one is flying into the future with a metallic and glass space-age design. The more noticeable the design, the more it attracts customers, or so goes the store owner’s calculation. And those who succeed in making the customer extend his or her time in the shop as long as possible will have the highest sales figures. Customers nowadays are especially looking for entertainment, surprises and inspiration while shopping, which casts interior architecture in an increasingly important role. As today almost everyone can shop online, real shopping must offer something superior to its virtual cousin. It has to speak to all of the shopper’s senses and create a positive feeling. For this reason, interior design experts try to create a leisure-time and well-being ambiance that puts potential customers in the mood to shop.

Admittedly, there is no patent solution for this. Indeed, there are many ways to win the customer’s favour. Experts now agree that in general, after years of puristic shop design, stores may dare to look more expressive again. For example, trends from fashion and interior design like the Asia look², animal prints¹, colourful wallpapers and ornamentation are spilling over into store construction. Yet, no one is saying things like “right now only glass and bare steel work” or “in spring everyone is doing a safari look”. Any aesthetic laws or real trends are really nowhere to be found.

Actually though, stores cannot be completely refurbished each season. More often, they follow renovation cycles between 7 and 10 years, depending on their product. For this reason store designers try to walk that fine line between expressive and yet timeless design. “After all, stores should last long enough before customers start saying things like “been there, done that”, explains Jeffrey Hutchison, which he says is a store owner’s biggest fear. Hutchison designs flagship stores from Donna Karan to Polo Ralph Lauren. For this reason, it is important to design the store set up as a modular system that can be quickly changed and thus more easily adapted to new products and new collections.

Claus Schmidt from store construction company Assmann sees another reason for the lack of real trends in shop design. “Trends dissolve themselves into concepts”. Each store design concept today needs a new approach that promises uniqueness to a store. Successful store design is marked by individuality, authenticity and personality.

As products are increasingly interchangeable, marketing strategies have to give them a larger emotional context. Marketing can infuse a product with an unmistakable “aura”, what is referred to as the marketing message. This is primarily communicated through advertising. Nevertheless, shop design is an important means that practically stages marketing identity as a three-dimensional room experience.

The customer should be able to experience and feel a brand’s spirit and uniqueness with all their senses. For example, this can be accomplished with the selection of specific materials. In this way, unfinished wood lends a rustic touch. Silk or linen provide a raw elegance. The more believable a brand’s presentation at the point of sale, the more durable an impression it makes on the customer, explains interior architect Karl Schhwitzke whose store designs include Escada and Esprit. His motto: “a good store is like an exciting story”. Shop designers act like film directors, creating rooms that are designed to move the customer through an invisible storyboard. These rooms are never static because the customer is always changing their perspective – following a path and performing different activities like selecting, comparing, trying on and paying. Real stories can be woven into a designer’s created story, rendering it even more emotional. Lacoste serves as a good example. Designers used the stories of René Lacoste’s tennis career and that of the crocodile for the French sports label’s flagship store. The design conveyed a message of competence in sports and at the same time created an almost personal relationship to the customers.

Here especially it is increasingly important for internationally known brands to monitor their various regional markets carefully. If all stores of a specific label look the same worldwide, cosmopolitan customers become easily bored. Following the motto “think global, work local”, local colour can in fact be that little added extra which makes all the difference. Successful design concepts integrate local references into the architectural givens of a project. For this reason, the Armani store in the elegant Neuer Wall in Hamburg has to look different than the one on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles.

Technical innovations such as new materials support designers in their work. For example, polymers and actually all types of plastics are making a comeback, either as a material for interior store elements or as protective surfaces for metals and woods. Their advantages are obvious, explains New York materials expert Andrew Dent. “Plastic is always one of the least expensive, most flexible and durable materials. It can be formed into any shape, colourful or transparent and can even mimic other materials such as wood, metal or glass”. Such developments are always opening up new possibilities in store design.

Also, experts estimate that aluminium, steel and brass will remain the most used metals in store systems, although the way they are used and the effects they can produce are changing. Copper and bronze are not able to compete with these metals. “They are too expensive and can quickly get a patina”, explains Dent.

Natural materials are in fashion, such as simple leather, woods, fabrics, bark and cork. Bamboo is also currently very popular as it currently epitomises the omnipresent in-concept of sustainability. Trend researchers like Marc Völler from the Hamburg Agency Neogard claim that sustainability is a megatrend and that in the future no company will be able to get around it. After all, today not only does the safety of a product’s ingredients classify it as environmental, the source of the product and its ingredients, fair trade with the producers, reduction of waste in production and energy-saving transportation all play an important role. These are themes which good shop design can communicate.

For economic reasons, sustainability also plays an important role in shop design. For example, the use of a modern lighting system can significantly decrease a store’s energy consumption. Efficient lamps like LED and halogen use less electricity and release less heat, which in turn considerably reduces air-conditioning costs for a store. “In view of noticeably higher energy costs, energy optimisation has become one of the highest priorities for projects”, observes the EHI Retail Institute in Cologne.

Generally, intelligent lighting planning is one of the most important design elements in modern shop design. In fact, light can completely change a room. Light can emphasise a room’s limits, open it upward, or make it seem narrow or wide. Besides being light or dark, light can also be diffuse or bright, direct or indirect, static or dynamic, warm or cold, elegant or atmospheric, clinical or dramatic. To achieve this, targeted lighting effects must supplement the basic lighting system. The “right” lighting can pull customers into a store, lead them to a specific place, emphasise displays and put them in “the right light”, surprise the potential shopper and manipulate their mood - and all this varied throughout the day and season. After all, a person’s inner biological clock makes them expect sunlight or a cool lighting during the day but warmer lights in the evening and toward sunset. For this reason, intelligent lighting systems change the mood of the lighting depending on the time of day or can be flexibly set with the push of a button to adapt to the shoppers’ needs. This enables store owners to adjust conditions to the customers’ mood and always be able to create the right atmosphere and favourable atmosphere to facilitate their decision-making process in shopping. Even modern lighting systems have put an end to the bad lighting often found in changing rooms. Sometimes the customers can even control the lighting themselves and look at their new outfit in various lights, say a tennis skirt in artificial sunlight or a formal dress in softer evening light. Modern light diodes can even be built into the furniture, floors, walls and any type of material. Hence light has become an integral part of architecture.

Modern lighting systems, new materials and individual approaches, forward-looking yet timeless, sensual, surprising and sustainable: modern shop design is today more than just putting up shelves. Interior architecture can even decisively influence a store’s success. The focus is to create concepts that are unmistakable and customtailored for the customer. Store designers create walkable worlds of brands, which aim to allure potential customers and seduce them to buy.

Contemporary materials, intelligent technology and lighting systems are all means to an end. They create a sensual shopping experience that surrounds the shopper yet is rendered invisible by technology.

Nicolette Maurer