Harrods Womens Designerwear, UK

The final phase of Harrods Women’s Designer Wear opened in May 2025  as the latest first floor womenswear department of the high-end department store Harrods. The submitted project includes rooms dedicated to holiday & swim, evening & occasion and branded designer collections as part of a first-floor masterplan redevelopment. The department offers a range of brands, harmonised by a luxurious, cohesive and complimentary design strategy helping the customer feel relaxed and elevated as they navigate seamlessly from brand to brand all in one sophisticated department.

Housed in an area of the store that features historic decorative ceilings, the listed ceiling could not be disturbed. To overcome this, a bespoke suspended track solution was developed allowing flexible spotlighting onto brand mats, displays and mannequins. The track is powered from a minimal power locations and suspended below the historic ceiling in harmony with the space’s heritage. Concealed cabling behind beam casings distributes power to the suspended track for retail spotlighting and smaller upward spotlights to highlight the historic ceiling feature mouldings.

Entrances are framed by brandable mannequin displays backlit by a warm halo of light, and discreetly spotlit from three sides, providing inviting and dramatic displays for the brands available within the development. The combination of warm welcoming 2400K indirect lighting and 2700K high colour rendering spotlighting sets the tone for the department with all lighting selected from a limited number of suppliers for colour consistency and a feeling of unity across the brands.

Around the room perimeters, concealed indirect lighting washes fluted bulkheads, offering ambient light to the space, while showcasing the architecture and providing a consistent illuminated signage band for branding.

Across the boutiques, integral matching colour temperature lighting has been introduced to signage on the hanging rails and pavilions, and around the base of the mannequin plinths, shelves and retail vitrines. This adds further layers of depth, interest and aesthetic consistency. The brand back walls are also illuminated with indirect linear lighting, providing a coordinated wash of light to the perimeter walls.

The ambient warm light in the space, is punctuated by low glare high colour rendering spotlighting, creating contrast to accentuate the luxurious fabrics. LDI took care to ensure minimal direct illumination to the floor, ensuring garments, hats and product displays are the main feature.

All retail lighting uses high colour rendering, with 2700K colour temperature. This has produced a luxury hospitality feel, while also ensuring the fabric colours are vibrant and true in colour representation – something that is very important to give shoppers a true impression of the items they are buying.

The track luminaires were specifically selected with sustainability in mind, with excellent circularity (TM66) and embodied carbon (TM65) scores, and the number of fittings was carefully considered keeping energy consumption across the department low. Almost all track lighting is product focussed allowing general light levels to be lower, further reducing energy for a sustainable focussed, comfortable and exclusive setting.

Luminaires and details were sampled and tested to ensure balance of tonal effect throughout.