From mellow tones to punchy pops of colors, plant shops and home and gift shops are turning to color blocking to craft visual appealing in-store experiences that captivate customers while enhancing their shopping experience.

The best color blocking experiences feel fresh, airy and discover-worthy, allowing customers to enter a welcoming space to explore and seek the hues they love most. Whether the palette is filled with calming neutrals or flashes of bold color, the experience is often peppered with various pots and planters, plant accessories and home accents.

“The thoughtful layering of like colors in a retail environment offers an artful ‘path’ of exploration,” explained Becky Hillis, Creative Director at Accent Decor. “It creates mini destinations that speak to numerous customer types and tastes. Plant shops are especially able to articulate their point-of-view and personality through color. It’s fun to experience and shop this way when a merchandising team has clearly poured their hearts into creating an intentionally curated shop.”

In a new series, we interviewed two customers on different coasts to lend their expertise and insights on the art of color blocking. In this installment we caught up with Amy Paul who owns and operates San Diego-based Pigment alongside her husband Chad Anglin. Pigment opened in 2007 as an art gallery to showcase local artists. Art led in time to more developed vignettes, sofas, side tables and eventually smaller gifts items. With a heavy focus on the fundamentals of art and good design, thoughtful merchandising followed. Today the shop is recognized for design savvy gifts, flora and furniture and impeccable vignettes and displays. Over time Pigment grew into a series of three retail locations complemented by successful ecommerce and social media presences.

Tell us about Pigment’s visual merchandising team.
We’re proud to work with ten talented visual merchandisers who support three stores in sunny San Diego (North Park, Point Loma and Del Mar), each roughly 3,000 square feet in size. In addition to flexing their talents in our retail locations they also support our website presence.

What are your 3-5 tips for retailers and merchandisers who want to integrate color blocking within their storefront?
Color blocking can bring order to even seemingly random items.  Whether it’s a disparate subject matter in a fine art painting or products in the context of a retail display, color can serve as a thread of continuity. Here are some color blocking tips to keep in mind:

• Explore the entire breadth of a hue.  Even within one color family, the viewer will respond differently to various tones, shades and temperatures.
  
  
• While color blocking is often associated with vibrant pops of a single hue, consider low saturation neutrals as well.  Barely-there color is just as impactful.
  
  
• Listen to your gut. Your initial response to a color or composition will parallel the customer experience. 
  
  
• Become a storyteller, the best color choices tell a story.
  

How does color-blocking improve or impact the customer shopping experience?
At Pigment, we find that color blocking provides order.  We carry a wide range of products and color binds them together, allowing eyes to traverse the space without feeling overwhelmed.  That’s the goal anyhow! 

How does color-blocking create efficiencies for the team at Pigment?
As with customers, color provides order for the merchandising teams.  We can send items to each store and without discussing, the team knows exactly which story it correlates to.  Or, on a really fun day, an item in a new color will serve as a catalyst for an entirely new display.

Do you stick to a certain set of hues, or do you change it up by season? Share your approach. We switch things up all the time.  We’ll often stumble upon a color or colorway as we’re buying for our stores, and it becomes a point of departure.  We’re very collaborative – we see it and grab on. I also teach Color Theory at community colleges and have long said I’m color obsessed.  I love both technical harmonies and breaking the rules of color–which can be more interesting than obeying the rules.  Learning and teaching color is a lot like wine tasting–the more you sample, the more refined your palette becomes.

How does color impact your buying and sourcing journey? Do you seek certain colors & textures? Or do you let trends & customer insights lead the way?
Product selection is about listening to your gut.  It’s a visceral experience. It can be like finding treasure–you know when it’s great and you must scoop it up.  We may search to expand on a story, but the initial response is an intuitive one.  We hope that customers feel the same joy when discovering the item in store.

Is there visual uniformity across your retail locations or are the locations different based on their local community and general vibe?
While the stores share some uniformity, they have their own personalities which tend to reveal over time.  Each location’s unique characteristics are a blend of the employees and the clientele.

Your stores are beautifully executed. Share your approach on creating an artful and inviting retail experience.
In our stores there are no planograms, directions, or formulas for a strong display.  We lean on the basic principles of design (composition, color and balance) for merchandising training, but a strong display is contingent on a passionate individual to create it.  Each merchandiser at our stores is an artist in their own right. They’re painters, singers, photographers-one team member has a background in textiles.  As in any strong team atmosphere, they push one another to be better all the time.  They’re passionate and they take immense pride in their work.  That’s the secret sauce if there ever was one!

Stay up-to-date with Pigment on their website or @shoppigment. Read the first installment of our color blocking series featuring The Victorian Atlanta.

To shop Accent Decor’s wholesale decor and wholesale pots and vases including all new and flower, plant and home products, visit accentdecor.com. 

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