The impact of lighting on a restaurant or hospitality business should never be underestimated. Lighting sets the mood, highlights key parts of a hospitality business, creates a lasting impression and helps enhance the dining experience. Here’s information about how hospitality businesses can do lighting right, where they should consider installing lighting, and how lighting can help improve a restaurant’s profits.
What Customers Expect From Lighting?
When a customer enters a restaurant, bar, cafe or hotel, they expect lighting that adds warmth, comfort and sets the right atmosphere. Lighting should set the general tone of the restaurant and match a restaurant’s theme. For instance, it’s important not to saturate a fine dining establishment with too much light. On the other hand, cafe owners don’t want to offer too little light when serving breakfast and lunch.
Customers ultimately expect lighting to improve every aspect of the dining and hospitality experience, but it’s not something they want to necessarily be aware of. In essence, lighting should seamlessly blend into a restaurant’s décor and make customers feel comfortable from the moment they step in the door.
The Right Color of Light:
If the lighting isn’t right, it ultimately doesn’t matter how good the food or service is at a restaurant, bar or cafe. In fact, lighting that is too bright can actually make meat dishes look gray. Leafy vegetables can even take on a blue hue. At the same time, lighting done right will ensure customers spend more and leave with a favorable impression.
Humans are drawn to natural light, so the goal of many restaurants should be to mimic natural light as much as possible. It’s important to take into account the color scheme of a restaurant space and the color of hospitality seating and tables. Lighting can change colors and enhance them. It’s also essential to consider how lighting color will impact and highlight focal points in a hospitality establishment, such as a bar or communal restaurant tables, as these are areas where a customer’s eyes will immediately be drawn.
How Lighting Influences a Restaurant’s Atmosphere?
Lighting needs will not only be different for each hospitality location but they can also depend on the time of day. For example, restaurants and cafes serving breakfast want to have plenty of natural daylight and focus on minimal electric lighting. If a restaurant doesn’t have enough windows, try to create a bright and airy atmosphere with electric lighting to ensure guests can start their day off on a positive note.
Dinner should feature dimmed lighting, an ambient atmosphere, and even candlelight, which can help create an intimate environment. The same concept is useful for bars in the evening and going into the night as well. For hospitality owners who want higher customer turnover, such as if you’re running a cafe or a restaurant that features quick but tasty food, bolder and brighter lighting can help facilitate a faster paced atmosphere.
All of these different factors underline why it’s important to have a versatile lighting system that can be adjusted to fit the time of day and the specific mood that should be presented.
Seek the Advice of an Expert:
Sometimes it’s important to seek the help of an interior decorator, architect or lighting specialist for hospitality business owners who are unsure of how a specific lighting system will impact the look of a space. These experts can help select and position LED lights, track lighting, spot lights, lanterns, accent lighting, and other types of lighting systems. They can even help arrange lighting over hospitality tables and restaurant chairs in a way that helps complement some of the best features in a restaurant, bar or hotel space.
Perfect Patio Lighting to Realize Profit:
The patio seating area of any restaurant is one of the areas that generates the highest customer traffic and is usually one of the first areas that fills up, especially on a nice day. That’s why patio lighting has to be done correctly.
Think about string lighting, ground lighting, wall-mounted lantern lighting, or even consider ambient solar lighting. All of these types of lighting create a soft but warm light that enhances the dining experience and creates a setting where people want to eat, drink and have a good time.
Ultimately, hospitality businesses can transform the look of their restaurant with the right lighting and lighting details. That’s why it’s important for every restaurant, bar or cafe owner serious about gaining return customers and the right atmosphere to consider the above tips for their own hospitality location.
