Irvine Spectrum is an upscale mall, fitting for the upper-middle to upper classes that live in the surrounding areas. To give the mall a more elegant atmosphere, the designers have chosen to use theatrical angles such as uplight and downlight to create an ambient and dramatic shopping experience.Permanent fixtures in the mall include uplight on the top portions of the buildings and in fountains that can be found around the mall. There are even foot lights in some parts of the mall that create a dramatic image when people cross over the lights. The string lights are used to create an ambient and comfortable feeling as you walk by store fronts. In California, to decorate for the holidays, malls like to wrap string lights around trees. Ironically enough, these lights are often wrapped around palm trees. These lights are meant to remind shoppers of the holiday season and, in turn, evoke a happy feeling most people feel when thinking about the holidays. This happy feeling is meant to encourage shoppers to buy more.
The lighting in the store, MaxStudio, was all downlight. In the window display the down angle worked to create dramaic and angular shadows on the clothing. However, the lights failed to actually light the clothing very well. The flourescent lighting gave the store a stark, white look and feeling to it. While it was clear that the store was trying to achieve a mod, high end look, it was unsucessful. The store was a little dirty and the stark lighting only served to excentuate this. There was a high back light that was used for evvery rack that was against a wall. These lights were purely decorative and failed to light the clothing. But they did achieve their purpose of directing the shopper's attention towards those particular racks. In the back of the store, there were shelves of shoes that were backlit. This back light was ineffective and barely lit the shoes at all. The back area where the shoes were, was barely lit besides the backlight for the shoes. This was probably done to bring emphasis to the shoes, but only resulted in a poorly lit area of the store. Overall, the store was trying to achieve a high end look, but only succeeded to achieve poorly lit products.
The store that really captured my attention was Yankee Candle. Though Yankee Candle is not as high end as MaxStudio, I feel it achieved a more welcoming atmosphere for shoppers and better displayed its products. While Yankee Candle also used flourescent lighting, it achieved a warmer look to the store. This look was probably achieved by the warm wood that is seen in the flooring and displays. Yankee Candle uses the lights to their advantage by placing all of their glass products under the lights, thus making the glass candles and hurricanes look shiny and luxurious. Similar to MaxStudio, Yankee Candle uses down light for their window displays. However, MaxStudio uses fixed lights that cannot be moved/focused to better accentuate the clothing. Yankee Candle uses flourescent lights that are placed on a grid and can be moved around the grid, to better lights the products being sold. The lights on the grid can also pan and tilt to get a better focus. Overall, the store has a very welcoming feel that invites the shopper into the store to look at (and smell) all the shining and glittering products.