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The Covent Garden branch of Muji, the Japanese lifestyle chain, is housed in a Victorian building in a busy London thoroughfare. The store design combines the existing historical structure and finishes with new modern elements in a fresh and exciting way.

With its origins in Japan, Muji’s basic principle of ‘No Brand Quality Goods’ is to develop and sell simple products at reasonable prices by making the best use of materials while considering environmental issues. This is translated into the retail spaces through the careful selection of effective materials, services and lighting.

Retail design for Long Acre London is based by architects McDaniel Woolf, who have been responsible for architectural and lighting concepts in European Muji stores for over 15 years.

It is the choice of interior finishes which drives the aesthetic is unique for each store, based on features and materials that already exist within the building. An original rooflight was uncovered and refurbished, which as well as being a feature, has the benefit of bringing natural daylight into the rear of the store to create a pleasant ambiance. Brick walls were revealed in the basement and these were sandblasted to reveal their rich colour and texture.

Ansorg were selected to develop the lighting scheme for Long Acre and another London store on the basis of their technical ability, but also because the design of their products reflected the Muji retail values. Working in partnership with McDaniel Woolf, Ansorg produced a resulting lighting system which performs several tasks: it ensures an optimum brightness level to promote the merchandise presentation, while at the same time placing accentuated highlights on the product which is displayed in different groupings: health and beauty, stationery, fashion, home and storage.

Ansorg combined two standard products, the LightStripe modular luminaire system and the Vario lighting duct system, because they complemented each other perfectly both from the functional and aesthetic point of view.

For the main sales area of the store the LightStripe system was selected because it exhibits a very high flexibility. Mujj product groupings are moved around the store dependent on season, special promotions etc. Because of tool-free handling, the module panels, which can also house loudspeakers, can be changed easily to align the light to promote a different kind of merchandise presentation. The Vario duct system was used as a suspended system or as a ceiling-mounted system, passing below the differentiated ceiling heights and structural conditions.

The resulting exciting atmosphere, with excellent colour rendition, is produced by a combination of metal halide and fluorescent lamps. The former set the scene, giving brilliant light onto the merchandise, while the fluorescent lamps provide a high luminous level and permit glare-free working in areas away from display such as around the cash register. On the ground floor and in the basement, metal halide lamps with a low wattage have been used because of the different ceiling heights.

Muji stands for a clearly defined lifestyle: simple, natural, elegant. And these attributes are reflected in Ansorg‘s aesthetic yet functional, high-quality lighting solution for the store in Long Acre, one of 400 branches in 16 countries across the globe.