Colour psychology: retail design.

Your patrons will build a first impression up from the first 90 seconds of entering into your store. If there is ever a place where first impressions count it is here. Further to this statistic, 62%-90% of first impressions are influenced by the colour and 52% of shoppers will not return if they do not like the stores aesthetics.

Red, this is the colour of sales. When you see the colour red, it seems to say “LOOK AT ME”; this colour is perfect for instantly grabbing your audience’s attention as it is eye-catching and can help to encourage your patrons to make quick decisions in your store. However, too much red can cause aggravation. Hence why is used in fast food chains, the red colour stimulates people to buy cheaper food and eat and leave fast. This helps the store to have a faster turnaround of customers.

On to pink. This is often seen as a two-faced colour, for instance in a psychological experiment on dangerous prisoners, they had their cells painted pink. Prisoners exposed to the pink addition to their cell experienced calming effects for 20 minutes. Before seeing spikes of high levels of aggression, higher than they had experienced before entering the cell. For this reason, pink is a double-edged sword.

Next is orange. This colour is seen as motivational, it makes people happy, energetic and enthusiastic colour. Like red, orange can capture the attention, but without the aggravation side effects. For this reason, the colour is a suitable for a retail design.

Yellow, seen to be a warm and cheery colour, it helps stimulate concentration, with people often see yellow first. It is seen that too much yellow can cause fatigue and irritation, babies will cry more in a yellow room, for this reason, yellow is advisably not suitable for retail stores targeting families, mums and young children.

Green is a calming and refreshing colour; this is perfect for a retail store. With a variety of tones within this colour available, the only recommendation is to avoid using excessive amounts of dark greens as people will associate this with money, and you want your shoppers to shop in peace without concerns of how much money they are spending. Being the colour of nature, green is frequently considered to be the easiest and most relaxing colour on the eyes.

Brown, signifying warmth and security. It is a stable, dependable and down to earth colour. This colour is also appropriate for a retail design and works well when used in unison alongside other colours.

Blue is representative of loyalty, trust and confidence. Blue is a calming colour and will help lower pulse rate, keeping people experience feelings of tranquillity. This is also a good colour for a retail store. It will promote a relaxed experience for your patrons.

Now purple, this colour does not appear often in nature; because of this, it is widely considered a rare colour. For this reason, it was used and is now frequently associated as the colour of royalty. In addition, this colour has become a symbol of luxury, wealth and sophistication.

The penultimate colour to discuss is white, considered to be the portrayal of light and purity. Often described as the absence of colour, it is arguably the colour which best reflects perfection. A shoe store in Las Vegas is entirely white. For this reason, it looks like it glows from the outside. The bonus of using the colour white is that it makes the store appear bigger.

Finally black, seen to be a slimming colour, it is useful when making a store appear smaller. Using black will make your merchandise POP. Black is also a good colour to paint a high ceiling, as it will make your space feel more intimate.