The lighter side of parking
Q-Park looks at how lighting impacts on shopping centre car parks
Research shows that consumer behaviour and emotional responses are significantly influenced by the combined effect of design, colour, texture and lighting. When these four elements are carefully applied in a modern shopping centre, the effect is to create a pleasurable and inviting experience for customers. It makes sense that car parks linked to the centres should be paid just as much attention in these areas if they are to generate an equally positive experience.
Just like moths, people are attracted to brightness, and with car parks still generally thought of as dark, intimidating and gloomy places, clear, bright lighting needs to be top of the list.Car park operator Q-Park uses a clever mix of white and blue lighting in its car parks, chosen to create a secure, safe feel as well as giving a stylish, sophisticated look. Colour has a significant influence on people’s moods and emotions: whitereflects light and is airy and neutral. It also implies freshness and cleanliness. Blue is the purest, coolest and deepest color of the spectrum and stands for rest, relaxation, sleep, regeneration and communication. It is also thought to decrease blood pressure and heart rate, dissolve nervousness and stress and have a very calming effect on the entire organism.
Q-Park’s choice of white lighting is designed to give a natural daylight feel 24 hours a day, with careful positioning ensuring that dark spots are eliminated and the entire car park feels open and safe. The secure feel is enhanced by significant use of glass, particularly in stairwells and lift lobbies, with blue lighting then used as an accent colour. Its Liver Street car park in Liverpool, for example, has an almost entirely glazed stairwell, with all movement fully visible from outside the building. Blue illumination strips on the underside of the handrails enhance night time visibility, creating a safe, welcoming feel and acting as a striking contemporary design feature in itself.
Choices of design, colour, texture and lighting in shopping centres are not random – they derive from painstaking research, particularly into the psychological influences they have on people. Time and cost-consuming as it may be to integrate these factors into car park design, operators can only benefit from doing so. Ploughing on with delivering the same tired looking dingy car parks that alienate and intimidate customers long before they have stepped into the shopping centre can only result in loss of business and eventually their contracts.
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For further information on Q-Park or for photography, please contact Marketing on 0870 442 0104 or email marketing@-park.co.uk
