We’re excited to unveil our annual retail design trends, highlighting the innovative ways you can elevate your store interiors and elevate the shopping experience for customers.
Whether you’re considering turnkey solutions to refresh your store’s branding and signage systems or you’re unsure about where to begin, we’ve gathered some of our top retail design trends to inspire your next steps.
Read on for The Look Company’s Retail Design Trends 2025.
1 - Flex Retail: Adapting In-Store Design to the Customer Experience
The evolving demographic of the modern customer is driven by their interactions with digital media. They expect constant changeover and crave new experiences. As noted in research from the International Business & Economics Research Journal, customers are more likely to associate the showcased products with higher quality and value when they encounter attractive displays.
FlexRetail is the ability to adapt retail design based on customer experience. This approach can help stores stay at the forefront of retail design trends while meeting changing shopping preferences.
The significant expense of updating your store design with custom fixtures and finishes multiple times a year is beyond what is feasible. Even major retail chains with numerous locations across North America typically opt not to undertake complete design overhauls; instead, they focus on updating branded areas during new builds.
Strategically designing the interior branding of your store isn’t an embellishment; it’s a practical business decision that can lead to higher sales. Flex Retail with SEG fabric and framing systems provides an alternative way to change the look of your store without costly labor, materials, or downtime, which is a better return on capital expenditure.
2 - Bringing Home Interior Design Trends into Your Store
There’s a strong correlation between interior design trends and how to design your retail space. A well-designed store helps to connect with customers as they can relate their home life to comfortable shopping experiences.
Some notable interior design trends that may be prevalent in store branding for the incoming year include: Earth tones, vintage and retro accents and textured surfaces. These particular trends don’t just apply to furnishings or home decor stores. A broader application of interior trends within the store branding is making its way into electronic stores, hardware stores or grocery stores as well.
EARTH TONES: A NATURALLY WARM COLOR PALETTE
Envelop your interior in a neutral color palette reminiscent of nature. Incorporate rich browns, terracotta, or shades of green to take the cold, industrial feel away from large retail spaces. These colors have a calming effect on shoppers, welcoming them into a relaxed environment for a casual shopping experience.
VINTAGE AND RETRO ACCENTS
There’s a certain nostalgia when it comes to reliving design trends from years ago. Timeless mid-century modern elements are making a comeback with the use of wainscotting, wooden bulkheads or vintage wood focal points.
Mix and match your retro with contemporary graphic design for signage systems that include full wall fabric and frames. Instead of building complicated carpentry, use printed SEG fabric to replicate woodgrain with photorealism, or update your walls and brand architectural structures like pillars.
TEXTURED SURFACES
Textured surfaces can dramatically change the appearance of your store. With the addition of depth and 3D elements similar to textured paint, wallpaper or exposed brick in the overall store branding, customers can immerse themselves into a welcoming shopping experience.
Incorporating textured surfaces can be as easy as changing out graphics if you have an SEG framing system in place. A solution that can be adaptable to any future interior design trends.
3 - Minimalist Branding for Signage Systems
Take inspiration from Scandinavian or Japanese aesthetics and de-clutter your sign systems. Signage with simplified graphic elements such as bold text, easy to interpret icons, branded color schemes and increased negative space are more effective to drive shoppers to different aspects throughout your store.
The goal should be an ease of navigation with a planned hierarchy of visual data. Larger, more prominent ceiling hung signs for departments or key focal points, mid-sized variations to guide shoppers to their destinations, and smaller floor-standing or integrated into existing fixtures to designate department specific promotions or to highlight product displays.
4 - Unmanned Pop-Ups and Self-Service Kiosks
The global unmanned stores market is projected to reach a value of $962.6 billion by 2033 from $81.4 billion in 2023, growing at a CAGR of 31.6% according to Research and Market’s analysis and forecast, 2024-2033.
Utilizing the combination of technology and static graphic systems, unstaffed pop-ups and kiosks allow for shoppers to browse and purchase independently. The addition of these areas in larger retail footprints or in standalone branded spaces are becoming increasingly popular.
Omnichannel in nature, unmanned retail meets the demand for convenience and efficiency, much like the experience of shopping online. Using AI driven insights and IoT infrastructure (sensors, connectivity, data processing and UX/UI) in the absence of retail workers, these spaces are not only integrating technology, but need to have branded graphic areas to contribute to the overall look and feel of the parent retail brand.
5 - Pressing Pause with Comfort Stations
Going forward, what type of space can be offered where no special services are available? A non-retail space of course. Enter comfort stations, a place to take a breath and observe.
Incorporating multi-use areas into retail spaces to increase foot traffic has been a tactic to bring more customers through your front door. Finding the complementary services that could be offered alongside products has been seen in the likes of drug stores, athletic retail, and electronic stores for the past couple of years.
Designed with a customers’ comfort in mind, these areas offer noise reduction, less inventory, and promote increased dwell time. In some cases, retailers are influencing purchases by creating open areas, free of distractions and less visual noise, for customers to become inspired and mull their purchase decisions.
The Look Company: Your Visual Engagement Partner
Retail design trends come and go, but our commitment to quality products and services is timeless.
With a full team of experienced visual engagement specialists, The Look Company can provide a full range of store branding and signage solutions all in one place. From custom applications and innovations, to replacement graphics and hardware, discover how to take your retail space to the next level.
We look forward to seeing how 2025 will shape the retail landscape with the challenges and successes in store.