Is your store interior Instagramable?

In today’s socially-connected, hyper-visual world, it is increasingly important for restaurant and retail interiors to offer a beautiful, brand-centric background for customers to take selfies against.

The more “Instagramable” your interior is, the more likely your restaurant or retail location is to get freely shared on social media and the internet at large. After all, free, positive, publicity is always a good thing.

So, just how effective are Instagramable interiors in drawing foot traffic into your retail store? In one word: Very.

Just look at the cult popularity of the Museum of Ice Cream in New York City.

The Museum of Ice Cream is a pop-up ice-cream shop designed to be as photogenic as possible. The store even includes a giant rainbow sprinkles “swimming pool” visitors can play and photograph themselves in. The interior design concept was so popular that the pop up had to extend its run to accommodate the demand it attracted.

Selfies in the Museum of Ice Cream’s (fake) sprinkles swimming pool (image via Museum of Ice-cream)

Here are a few of our top tips for creating an Instagramable interior design to attract social media addicts to your store:

Use a strong background colour. Pink, in particular “millennial pink” is very popular right now. The trick is to use your feature colour on your wall and floor space to create a background that looks good from a distance, for a full body shot, and up close for a portrait or selfie.

The colourful facade of the Paul Smith Pink boutique in Los Angeles has become a well-known “selfie mecca”. The stripes were added as a temporary publicity stunt to support LGBT pride month, attracting hundreds of thousands of posts and shares across social media. (Image via Paul Smith)

Pick a pattern. Patterns, particularly blog stripes or polka dots in a bright colour pallet make for great eye-candy. Try a multi-colour horizontal wallpaper on an otherwise blank wall and watch your shoppers queue to photograph themselves in front of it.

Greenery. Nothing says “let’s take a selfie” quite like a green, living wall. We have covered this greenery trend in the past, and it is still going strong. Your local garden centre can help you install a water-wise, easy to maintain succulent-based green wall as part of your retail interior design for just a few thousand rand.

The very photogenic green wall at Cafe Del Sol Botanica (image via Joburg.co.za)

Collections. A curated collection of objects, such as a collection of vintage clocks, assorted mirrors or eccentric hats hung in an artistic arrangement on a feature wall akes for a great selfie-backdrop.

Selfie-spot. A seating area or wall graphic strategically positioned to get shoppers to interact with the space makes a tempting selfie-spot. The Brow Bar lash wall is a great example of this.

The giant back-lit gold eyelash the Blackline Retail Interiors team designed for the Brow Bar in Menlyn makes great selfie eye-candy. We have spotted many South African celebrities snapping selfies under our gilded lashes since the salon opened last year. Here, owner Unazia, aka The Brow Queen, poses with blogger Beatrice Banda at the store launch. (image via http://www.beliciousmuse.com/the-brow-bar-menlyn-launches/)

Ask us! As professional retail designers, we can help you design a perfectly unique, photographic interior design for your retail outlet, restaurant or office reception area. Drop us a call, we’d love to work with you.