Clothes shopping should be fun — so why are fitting room lights out to get us?

Buying new clothes — or more specifically, trying them on — can be a traumatising experience.

You might have spent hours scouring the shops, curating the perfect selection of pieces.

But once you cross that fitting room threshold, only to be confronted with an aggressive overhead light, it’s easy to start wondering why you ever bothered getting out of bed in the first place.

When clothes that look incredible on the hanger suddenly lose all appeal because of the dimly-lit changing facilities, it’s puts you off purchasing — something Phoebe Williams knows only too well.

When the 26-year-old ‘isn’t in the mood’ during a shopping trip, she’ll often ‘assess the fitting room setup’ as soon as she enters the store.

This way, if she spots any nasty-looking lighting, she can ‘abandon the whole shop altogether’ and save herself the distress.

‘Of course you can rationalise with yourself and know to accept the horrendous lighting, stifling heat, abundance of dust and general overstimulation are just part and parcel of being in a changing room, but it’s almost impossible not to have your mood dampened,’ she tells Metro.

‘Shopping is meant to be a fun, luxurious little day out! Nobody wants to try on clothes when what they’re seeing in the mirror is ruining their day’.

In terms of the role harsh retail lighting plays in her buying decisions, Phoebe adds: ‘If I am trying on clothing and the lighting is doing everything to work against me and the clothes, I’m obviously going to leave them. If they don’t look good, why would I buy them?’

She isn’t alone in this either. People have been complaining about feeling insecure in dressing rooms for years online, including dozens of Reddit posts highlighting this specific issue — questions like ‘does anyone else feel that changing room mirrors are just the worst?’ and ‘why do fitting rooms have such harsh lighting?’

There’s even been academic studies on it, with one paper published in 2020 revealing the light in certain high street changing cubicles made customers feel ‘uncomfortable’.

Where do retailers go wrong?

Lighting designer Luke Locke-Wheaton has worked on a number of retail projects, with the Lighting Design Studio co-founder emphasising that when it comes to these kind of commercial spaces, the ‘shop windows and dressing rooms are the most important areas’.

He goes on to note that the three key aspects of good fitting room lighting are: colour temperature, colour rendering, and light placement.

Colour temperature determines how warm or cool the lighting is going to be, which Luke explains is measured using the Kelvin scale ranging blue or yellow hues.

The lower the number is, the warmer the light; 3000K is considered warm whereas 6000K is very cold.

Luke explains: ‘If you look at a supermarket like Aldi or a Lidl, they have quite cold uniform light throughout, whereas if you go slightly upmarket, somewhere like Waitrose, it’s very subtle but there’s a slightly warmer colour temperature’.

Colour rendering refers to how well an artificial light source shows off the true colours of objects compared to natural sunlight. Ideally in a retail environment, you want to show off products as accurately as possible, but certain types of light can dull or distort shades.

Then there’s the all-important placement.

‘If you’ve got a downlight over your head, you end up with an unflattering shadow under your eyes and nose,’ says Luke.

‘And if you’ve got light coming up from below, you also end up with big shadows on your face.
So, what you want is light to come straight at you – a diffused light source that’s eye level’.

‘It’s not more expensive to have better lighting’

Phoebe theorises that ‘bad fitting rooms are just a reflection of fast-fashion high street store and their entire business model’ where cost-cutting is king, as ‘the more high-end you go, the better the overall in-store experience is in general’.

According to Luke however, if budget retailers were to approach lighting fixtures with a little more care, as opposed to just ‘checking a box’, they could improve the customer experience exponentially.

He explains: ‘It’s about being clever with the design.

‘A consultant would be able to show a client that instead of paying £200 for a downlight, spend £40 on a wall light and another £40 on a high-quality lightbulb, and for half the price you’ve got much better placement and the right colour temperature.’

‘With retailers, changing rooms tend to be an afterthought. They’ll just whack a couple of downlights in or they’ll leave it for an electrician or contractor to do and so not much thought is gone into the actual lighting layout’.

What other things make for a good fitting room?

Phoebe adds that it’s not just bad lighting that can jeopardise a fitting room experience; temperature is equally vital.

Clothing stores are often criticised online for being too stuffy, which is likely down to the way UK buildings are built to retain heat.

But while this might help us get through the chilly winters, it also means shops are furnaces all year round, and ultimately we all end up drenched in sweat just trying on a anything heavier than a tshirt come April.

Phoebe also says a ‘chair or somewhere to pop your stuff’ is always welcome, ‘otherwise you end up overstimulated and fighting with plastic hangers.’

Decent hangers were highlighted as another plus point, along with true-to-life mirrors and proper changing room doors, as opposed to ‘gross curtains that don’t close the whole way’.

One store that’s taken an innovative approach is lingerie retailer Boux Avenue. Offering three bespoke lighting options in its fitting rooms (Day, Dusk, and Night), users on TikTok called this design ‘perfection’.

Another retailer that’s impressed shoppers is Abercrombie & Fitch. TikTok creator @sydnie filmed her fitting room experience in a branch in 2025, showing how the store had added a built-in touchscreen panel that allowed customers to choose from four different light settings.

With research showing that up to 60% of purchasing decisions are made here, intentional decisions like these may not only be the difference between a positive or negative shopping experience for customers — they could prove make or break for a business’s profits too.

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