By Barbara Thau
The lighting departments at a Home Depot and Lowe’s store in Manhattan and Brooklyn, respectively, offered a breath of assortment, with a handful of private brands dominating each merchant’s mix.
Each unit offered a variety of styles, although Home Depot’s Chelsea store highlighted contemporary fare more prominently than Lowe’s.
At Lowe’s, an expansive ceiling fan area opened the lighting department, which sat adjacent to the paint area.
There was a concentration of product by Hunter and Harbor Breeze—Lowe’s private brand—ranging from ornate to modern looks.
Fans hung from the ceilings with corresponding models featured in boxed sets below. Price points ranged from $49.97 to $299.
Chandeliers, ceiling fixtures and vanity fixtures were featured behind the ceiling-fan area.
The chandelier mix included super-ornate looks and contemporary SKUs, such as a five-tier acrylic piece.
Vanity fixtures were priced from $9.99 to $120.
The table lamp department featured a mix-and-match display, with instructional signage on how to “design and combine lamps,” largely by Portfolio, its private brand. Modern and ethnic looks peppered the mix, including a lamp with a mushroom-pleat shade. A selection of lamps from designer Bob Mackie by Royce Lighting was also on hand.
A few SKUs from Tensor were sprinkled into an aisle of floor lamps from Portfolio.
A freestanding display of hand-blown pendant lighting was positioned across from ceiling fans.
The lighting department at a Home Depot store in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood sat at the front of the store, featuring much lower fixtures than the Lowe’s store.
Sconces and vanity fixtures opened the department and were featured along a wall at the perimeter of the store. The vanity fixtures were almost all from Home Depot’s Hampton Bay line, although a few items from Progress Lighting were featured. The mix ran the gamut from a traditional, antique bronze fixture to one with a geometric design.
Both the ceiling fan and chandelier assortments, mostly from Hampton Bay, were segmented by the brand’s classic and transitional lines.
A huge assortment of chandeliers were suspended from the ceiling as boxed ones sat below on blonde-wood fixtures.
The mix included a chandelier with frosted glass shades and silver accents from the classic collection, and on the other end of the design spectrum, a modern one with marble-etched glass shades.
The ceiling fan mix ranged from a $21.97 white fan to a $349.00 colonial pewter fan with bamboo blades.
In terms of niche categories, The Home Depot unit carried a few SKUs of iPod-enabled lamps from iHome.
The retailer spotlighted contemporary table lamps from George Kovacs and Adesso with island-like displays in the center of the department.
Hand-blown glass pendant lamps were also shown on an island-like display.