The team of landscape lighting experts at Southern Landscape Lighting Systems Alpharetta is proud to serve the thriving Metro Atlanta community, including the growing city of Alpharetta. The official website of Alpharetta, GA, highlights the recent growth of the area: “The community that had a population of only 3,000 in 1980 today is home to more than 65,000 residents and sees its population swell to more than 100,000 each workday. Alpharetta is now Georgia’s 12th most populous city, boasts some of the best schools in the United States, and is known far and wide as the Technology City of the South due to the large number of tech-focused companies that call Alpharetta home.” As well as being a wonderful place to call home, Alpharetta is also a great place to visit, a cultural center, and home to many fine restaurants.
Shedding Light on the Importance of Ambiance at a Restaurant
In the context of a restaurant, ambiance refers to the atmosphere, feeling, or mood patrons experience while at the eating establishment. How important is ambiance to the dining experience? In a recent article in Foodly, cuisine commentator Yuuny Pascal answers this question, writing, “The ambiance in a restaurant plays an undeniably significant role in shaping your customers’ overall dining experience. Ambiance ties the cuisine, service, and environment together to define your diners’ perception of your restaurant. What do customers want in a restaurant? They want style and substance, complimented by an atmosphere and unique experience. Customers want to feel valued and know more about their chosen dishes; having a member of staff simply reciting the menu back to them, either online or in person, isn’t going to make a positive impact or entice them to order.”
How to Create Ambiance That Invites and Delights Diners
A foundational principle in the restaurant milieu is the significant impact of the sensory experience (sight, sound, comfort) on ambiance and how ambiance shapes the dining experience. Commercial interior decorators serving the restaurant industry set forth the following key features that create atmosphere and shape ambiance in a restaurant:
- Impeccable service
- Appropriate music
- Unique and on-brand decor
- Accommodating furniture layout
- Winning color schemes
Color and visual interest are powerful forces that shape the perception and enjoyment of the restaurant experience. In a recent article entitled “The Psychology of Colors for Restaurant Design,” Jackie Lohrey noted this connection between ambiance and a great meal: “As the International Association of Color Consultants/Designers points out, ‘we eat with our eyes.’ This makes color critical in almost every aspect of successful restaurant designs.”
Landscape Lighting for Atmosphere and Ambiance
The quality of a restaurant’s ambiance is on display from the moment the restaurant comes into view. Planting beds, ornamental shrubs, trees, stonework, fountains, overflow seating, outdoor dining areas, walkways, statuary, and signage unite the cuisine, service, and environment and define the diners’ perception of the restaurant. As such, these features deserve to be expertly and tastefully illuminated by LED low-voltage landscape lighting.
Not only does LED landscape lighting enhance the visual enjoyment of the restaurant’s exterior decor, but lighting also provides practical safety benefits. In a post-COVID society, carry-out options and contactless takeout have become commonplace and expected. Well-placed lighting makes the parking lot a safer place, allowing both dine-in and takeout customers to frequent the restaurant. Even though customers who have ordered a carry-out meal do not spend as much time on the premises of the establishment, refined decor and a beautiful facade, professionally lit with commercial landscape lighting, leave a positive impression even in the brief time customers are at the restaurant to pick up their food.
Every passionate restaurant owner, from a single-location family business to a regional franchise, wants to provide delicious dishes and an amazing experience to their customers. When the food is mouthwatering, the service is fast and friendly, the facility is clean, and the exterior is bright and appealing, a restaurant has the potential to become a staple or a “best-kept secret” in the community where families and friends make memories for years to come. Birthdays, anniversaries, and life successes are all celebrated at the tables of the restaurant. Regular diners often become like family.
At Southern Landscape Lighting Systems of Alpharetta, the team understands the power of landscape lighting to cast a restaurant in the best light. Technicians use superior installation techniques that equal the quality of the brands of lighting fixtures the company installs. When a restaurant chooses Southern Landscape Lighting Systems of Alpharetta for commercial landscape lighting, the space will be elevated and transformed, creating a welcoming ambiance for diners.
Contact Southern Landscape Lighting Systems to learn more about landscape lighting design and installation for commercial clients. The Alpharetta office can be reached by phone at (770) 691-1221 or by email at [email protected].