Week 10: Site Specific Blog: Irvine Spectrum

My friends and I went to Irvine Spectrum last weekend, and when we got there I noticed right away all the string lights wrapped around the trees and hanging from the canopies, which gave the whole shopping center a very festive vibe. I observed the lights as my friends and I walked around, and I could see that there were lamps all along the sides of the stores, which provided enough light to see clearly, but they weren’t so bright that they hurt my eyes or took away from the lights of the store names. There were also floor lights and low wall lights in some sections of the shopping center that added to the visibility, and overall the lighting gave the place a very relaxed, casual, and welcoming feeling.


There were also some areas of Spectrum that had a snowflake template in a moving light from high above, and I thought the resulting snowflake-shaped light on the ground was pretty cute.

The only thing that confused me was that there were some lights aimed at the ground that changed color. They seemed pretty randomly placed, and I wasn’t really sure what they were for. If they were supposed to be for Christmas, they didn’t really add to the Christmas mood; the colors morphed between saturate reds, greens, blues, and purples, and to me they just looked like a jarring circle of light on the ground.


I thought the lighting in The Cheesecake Factory was not successful. I couldn’t even tell what the overall theme was supposed to be, but the lighting just didn’t seem right. When I stepped in, everything inside seemed very dark and also very warm. My phone’s camera didn’t capture it completely, but the lights along the wall were very orange. I felt that the lighting was so dark that it would be difficult to see the food, and the green lights by the seats (which, by the way, looked even worse in person) really confused me. I had no idea what the objective of that was. I guess it combated the warmth from the other lights a little bit, but it also gave the seating area a sickly feel and ruined any romantic atmosphere they may have been going for, which really doesn’t seem ideal for a restaurant in particular. My friend even said that the green lights reminded her of slime.

On the other hand, the lighting in Pressed Juicery caught my eye as my friends and I walked past it. Their counters and signs were white and their back wall was mostly natural looking wood, so the theme of the store seemed to be crisp and minimalistic. The ceiling lights provided visibility and gave the small store a very bright, clean, and crisp feeling, which went well with their rather minimalistic layout and aesthetic. The store also had some small hanging lights which didn’t seem to provide any visibility, but appeared instead to give off a down-to-earth and cozy vibe, which went well with their marketed-as-healthy product. Overall I thought the lighting in this store was very successful.

Taking this class has definitely made me more aware of the lighting design in stores and other everyday places that I go! :)