Live in Full Color

Learn about color schemes and their purpose in visual merchandising!

Louis Vuitton (Source: Retail Design Blog)

Imagine a world without color. We would be depressed, lack influence, and (most importantly) bored! This is because color has a psychological effect on us. Colors can influence your emotions and actions. For example, blue can make you feel calm, and make you sleepy. Since color has such a powerful impact on the human mind, it is important to incorporate proper use of it in visual merchandising and store design. Your potential consumers will appreciate it.

To use color to showcase your store image and communicate to your target market correctly, you can use the color wheel. This organizes 12 colors according to hue, value, and intensity. From the color wheel, you can then create a color scheme out of the 12 colors. A color scheme is an arrangement of colors that work well together. Picking a color scheme is easy and fun! There are so many color combinations to choose from: monochromatic, analogous, complementary, triadic, split-complementary, double-complementary, and achromatic. It is up to you as the visual merchandiser, or store designer, to pick which one best fits your display.

A great example of color used effectively is shown in this Louis Vuitton display in Budapest during 2012. An analogous color scheme is used on the spherical art piece made of arrows that surrounds the purse. It is analogous because the colors used are right beside each other on the color wheel: violet, red violet, (pink) red, red orange, orange, yellow orange, and yellow. This gives the display richness, but with a smooth transition of color. The display brings attention to the purse effectively positioned in the middle of the sphere. It is almost as if the purse is speaking to the consumer, “Look at me, I am important!”.

Takeaways

As you can see, color is essential to an effective store display. Color influences the consumer’s emotions and actions. So, have some fun! Experiment with color schemes and find what works best for your merchandise. Don’t you want to be as successful as Louis Vuitton?