VARUS in Sofiivska Borshchahivka: Supermarket Lighting

A supermarket under an open ceiling

The new VARUS supermarket in Sofiivska Borshchahivka opened in a stand-alone building with large glass frontage. The interior follows the chain’s style: an open dark ceiling with trusses, bright orange shelving and a light concrete floor. The lighting task was to light the whole sales floor evenly and give every product group its own accent, so food looks fresh and appetising.

Vision Lighting supplied 435 SHOOTER-L track spotlights and 286 metres of three-phase track. The tracks hang on cables below the open ceiling, bringing the spotlights closer to the shelving while the ceiling itself stays dark.

One light for the floor, its own spectrum for each department

The base layer is 4000K spotlights: CRI 80 in the grocery, household and drinks aisles, CRI 90 where product colour matters more. A 60° beam gives a wider spot over the aisles, while 38° focuses light on the shelves.

81 spotlights use special spectra for fresh food:

• Red meat: an 1800K spectrum for rich colour of beef and pork.
• Marbled meat: 3000K, the fat marbling is clearly visible.
• Fish: cool 5700K that shows freshness on ice.
• Fruit and vegetables: a high colour rendering spectrum for vivid colour.
• Cheese and bakery: dedicated warm spectra.

Another 57 spotlights at 3000K and 3500K with CRI 90 give warmer light in the zones where the store concept calls for it.

How much light a supermarket needs

For VARUS stores our lighting calculations target these levels:

• Sales floor: about 1300 lx average on the working plane.
• Grocery and alcohol: 1300-1450 lx on the displays.
• Meat: about 1200 lx, with light aimed at the counter.
• Fruit and vegetables: about 1500 lx.
• Frozen food: up to 1750 lx at the freezer displays.
• Entrance: from 850 lx.

At the same time the lighting power density of the floor is only about 14.5 W/m²: the high efficacy of the spotlights delivers the required lux without extra energy costs.

This is what a DIALux lighting calculation looks like for one of the chain’s stores. The rendering shows the sales floor as a shopper sees it, and the false colours show the illuminance at every point. Yellow and orange zones mean 1250-1750 lx, the same levels we plan for the sales floor and displays.

The glass frontage also works as advertising: in the evening the lit floor is clearly visible from the street, while the black spotlights almost disappear against the dark ceiling.

Fixtures in this project

• SHOOTER-L track spotlights: 435 TRL150-185 spotlights at 26 and 30 W, 81 of them with spectra for meat, fish, cheese, bakery, fruit and vegetables.
• Three-phase track: 286 metres of black track on cable suspensions.
• LINK linear lights: 5 fixtures, 1.5 m long.

Read more about lighting for food retail in our article on supermarket and grocery store lighting. Planning a store? We will prepare a lighting design project and handle turnkey installation.