Be Lenka

For the Slovak barefoot brand Be Lenka, we designed the lighting for their store in the Europa shopping centre in Banská Bystrica. It was not the first Be Lenka store we have lit.
Before we started designing, we went to the centre and measured the surrounding stores. A well-lit product is not enough if the customer walks past the store entirely. Light draws the eye, and if the neighbouring units are brighter, the customer keeps walking. We wanted to know how brightly the units around us lit their space, so that the Be Lenka store would catch the eye already from the walkway.
This created a continuous flow of attention. Light first brings the customer from the corridor inside, and once they enter, it leads their eye on to the displayed products.
Inside, we handled the lighting itself. We positioned the luminaires so that higher shelves would not cast shadows on the products below them. We set their distance from the wall and their mounting height so that a customer standing at the shelf would not shade the shoes with their own body. We verified everything with illuminance maps before installation.
Along the way, we also uncovered a flaw in the furniture design. At the original box spacing, a shoe in the lower box would have stayed in the shadow of the box above it. We flagged it and proposed a fix, moving the box 15 cm higher, with the exact dimensions for the carpenter.
The result is well-lit products, a store that does not blend into the centre, and light that guides the customer from the corridor all the way to the shelf.