In Living Color: How Color is Impacting Retail Sales
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Retail store designs are bidding adieu to “millennial monochrome and muted color palettes,” according to a report from Modern Retail, and “becoming more colorful, funkier and fun.”
The website says that “as competition for customers’ dollars gets tighter, stores are turning to splashy paint colors, bold art and comforting tapestries and curtains to invite shoppers, many of them younger ones,” to browse and buy.
Rebekah Kondrat, founder of Rekon Retail, a retail consultancy, told Modern Retail, “Brands used to say to us, “We want our store to look like if Apple built a shoe store or a convenience store…[But] we actually haven’t gotten that [request] in over a year.”
Instead, Kondrat says most (about 90%) of her clients want stores with “highly textured and saturated colors.” Alec Zaballero, managing executive at TPG Architecture, told Modern Retail that his clients want store designs that are “distinctive, unique, and brand-driven.”
Modern Retail says part of the shift is that retailers focused on “simple, efficient designs” during the pandemic because customers weren’t browsing around stores. But consumers are out and about again and “want to see more unique storefronts.”
Plus, Generation Z is now older and has more discretionary income. It prefers to shop in-store, and Modern Retail says stores think “eclectic store designs” will “cater to their interest in personalization and self-expression.”
But, Cindi Kato, principal at design firm Arcadis, told Modern Retail, that stores “need to be strategic about how they’re using color,” which is usually used for “wall accents, text, logos, digital signs, and point-of-purchase elements.”
Kato warns retailers to not choose colors that “fight against your product. You want to enhance it. It’s more about the purposeful use of color and what the customer is picking up from that.”
Before choosing your colors, learn more about how color influences consumer behavior and about color psychology in retail displays.
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Photo by?The Nix Company?on?Unsplash
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8 小时前This article resonates so deeply with what I've been experiencing . thank you Rieva for bringing this to us. Just last month, I completely transformed our flagship store from that sterile "millennial minimalism" to a rich tapestry of colors and textures. The customer response has been incredible—dwell time is up 27% and our Gen Z shoppers are actually taking photos of our displays for social media! I've been advocating for this kind of experiential design for years, and it's so validating to see experts like Rebekah confirming this shift. Her point about the purposeful use of color is spot-on—we've been careful to create vibrant backdrops that make our products pop rather than compete with them. This article is going straight into my inspiration folder!
Thank you for sharing these valuable insights, Rieva! At 9figure media, we've been closely tracking this shift from minimalist aesthetics to more vibrant, textured retail environments. Your observation about the 90% of clients now requesting saturated colors aligns perfectly with what our retail clients are reporting—consumers are craving immersive, distinctive spaces that reflect authentic brand personality. We'd love to continue this conversation about purposeful color implementation that enhances rather than competes with products. Our team recently completed a study on sensory retail experiences that complements your findings beautifully.