Think about lighting beyond how it illuminates a room. The holidays are a perfect example of this. People decorate the outside (and inside) of their houses with strings of lights, and companies get in on the festivities as well by lighting up their facilities.
Research[i] has proven that holiday lights can help communicate sociability, friendliness, and accessibility. Companies, restaurants, stores, and commercial high-rises also use lights to celebrate and promote these feelings.
Festive lighting, whether it be for Christmas or the latest playoff game, can also be an indirect form of advertising for businesses as it helps draw attention, and it helps to engage with the communities around them. In fact, lighting is a great way for businesses to interact with the public as it can send a lot of messages with no additional ‘marketing’ costs.
Example 1: The Calgary Tower
The Calgary Tower is a great example of using lighting to engage with the community. Recent examples of this include lighting up red and green for Christmas, and (as pictured below) displaying the colours of France’s flag in support of Paris after the recent attacks.
Example 2: Toyota Tower
As we feature in our ‘Awesome Light Installations’ this month, South point Toyota Scion has created ‘Toyota Tower’. Toyota Tower is impossible to miss if you are driving on Deerfoot Trail after dark and has been hugely successful in drawing attention to the dealership and at engaging with the public.
You should also consider the impact of holiday (or festive) lighting on your staff. Team morale, especially in a customer service based business (or in a city like Calgary where the big industry has been hit hard by the recent downturn), can have a huge impact on the profitability and overall perception of your business. If your team is happy and engaged, that reflects well on you and your bottom line.
A note about lighting installations:
When designing and installing new lighting for your business, this opportunity for ‘marketing’ should be taken into account. If you consider using RGB LED lights in your space, you are able to have 521 different colour combinations at your disposal.
A note about colour psychology and holiday lighting:
As a company interested in doing a holiday lighting installation, it is important to know that colour says something to people on a subconscious level. This means that you may end up putting some people off if you design a holiday installation without taking into consideration the psychological connotations of the colour of lights you choose. Here is a quick guide to colour psychology[ii]:
- Red: love, warmth and comfort
- Green: tranquility, good luck, health and jealousy
- Blue: peaceful, tranquil, secure and orderly
- Yellow: cheery and warm
- Purple: royal, wealth, wisdom and spirituality
- Pink: love, calm and romance
- Orange: excitement, enthusiasm, and warmth
[i] Inferences about homeowners’ sociability: Impact of Christmas decorations and other cues, Journal of Environmental Psychology
[ii] Color Psychology, psychology.about.com
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