How Window Painting Benefits Your High Street Business!
Window painting is a long-established form of marketing as well as being a centuries old medium for great art. And yet, the purpose of window painting is more relevant today than it has been for decades. A well-crafted window decoration can work wonders for your business and your local high street community.
The decision to paint the windows of your business may seem like an inconsequential one, but it can have real and longstanding impacts on your organisation, producing direct as well as indirect gains on custom and revenue. Below we will look at window painting and the beneficial contributions it can make to your business.
Now is the time for window painting
Whilst the modern high street has faced its challenges over the years, it is still the primary way for organisations to conduct their business at a fixed location. And these locations still function as vital organs of the public square, for the benefit of everyone.
Beautiful window art within the public sphere was once upon a time the preserve of aristocratic elites or religious institutions due to the cost and lack of resources. Contemporary culture is now more conscious of aesthetic beauty within commonplace and everyday environments than in any other period. There has been no better time in history to seize the day and engage with the potential of art, affordably, for your own benefit.
These days, anyone can utilise the power of art to elevate their world. Organisations like retail chains, coffeeshops, clothes shops, bars, restaurants, social clubs and estate agents, all have the ability to capitalise on art’s value… It’s cheap, easy, and can be as permanent or as temporary as you would like.
Window painting benefits your business
There are a variety of benefits to having your organisation’s windows painted. Some of these benefits are concrete and immediate, whilst others are more long-term and indirect, but which still contribute to the bigger picture in significant ways:
Window Painting for The London Florist in North London
It is proven to increase sales by improving brand recognition and retention as well as footfall
It provides a strong catalyst for word-of-mouth advertising
It is cheaper than other forms of advertising, such as TV or social media, but still captures the undivided attention of passers-by
It provides a free form of social media advertising and exposure when pedestrians take a photograph or a selfie and share it over their social media profiles
It improves the visibility of premises with limited or zero frontage
It is eye-catching whilst also improving privacy inside the premises
It requires no special permit like awning signs or sandwich boards and takes up zero space
It improves the inside ambience of a business as well as the outside
Italian themed window painting which leads viewers into an engagement opportunity.
Whilst the benefits of window painting might not be as straightforward as leading to direct sales in a single step – although it sometimes is – the presence and tone they create for your business eventually will increase revenue. A painted window is a distinctive way for your organisation to present itself, inviting customers and clients into the building and resonating a positive atmosphere throughout the community. This atmosphere will cause ripple effects, which in turn will create waves of engagement and revenue for you.
The ‘beautiful windows’ theory
Small details of a hand-painted window display in London, UK
In the 1980s, there was an influential social theory proposed by the academics James Q. Wilson and George Kelling called the ‘broken windows’ theory. It suggested that a single broken window can affect the mindset of the surrounding community and lead to destructive behaviour. The idea propositioned that people would have less respect for their surroundings and feel encouraged by the degradation to degrade things further in a snowballing effect.
With this idea in mind, if a window is decorated and painted to look as beautiful as possible, it will in turn promote and encourage even more beauty and harmony throughout the community. If your organisation helps the local community, it will garner its own reputation and be elevated as a real asset to the culture in return.
A short history of window painting
Window art goes back centuries, from castles and cathedrals to the modern high street, making both interiors and exteriors of buildings as beautiful as possible.
The art of stained glass goes all the way back to the 7th Century as a means of trying to access or recreate the divine. It was expensive, laborious, and sometimes controversial. Queen Elizabeth deemed window art as being too decadent for the Church of England.
She believed it distracted from the necessity of contemplation, having missed the point somewhat, and so she banned it within all the churches and cathedrals she governed.
Window painting at the vanguard of marketing
American restaurant window art installation with photo op
By the 19th Century, as glass windows became more available, high-street shops became more commonplace, and materials were easier to access, there emerged a boom with sign making. A type of professional known as a ‘sign writer’ used quills and oil-based paint to decorate signboards, shop windowfronts, fabric awnings, and more.
Painting windows and shopfronts was the champion form of marketing during the early industrial age, and sign writers were the leading experts. A whole new and distinctive art form emerged to produce some of the great iconic images which are still globally recognised to this day. Logos like Ford and Coca Cola were designed by sign writers and have stood the test of time ever since.
Window painting back in fashion
Dentist window painting for Christmas seasonal period
By the 1970s and 80s, the introduction of mechanised and automatic vinyl cutting posed a threat to traditional window painting. The vinyl cutting machines would print text or designs onto self-adhesive vinyl sheets that were then stuck onto signboards, windows, or cars.
This process of vinyl cutting wasn’t cheap however, due to the need for certain types of software to get specific fonts and letterings. Materials were expensive also. This lead to businesses sharing their printed templates and styles, which in turn homogenised the shops and businesses that used such methods.
As a result, business owners soon realised the benefits in having a truly bespoke decorated window for their organisation and are now embracing the value of professional window painting.
There is something unique, individual, and beautifully human about a painted window. As we say at WeTheSeeds, window painting ‘generates a very different feeling compared to the generic and repetitive traditional signage’s’ that adorn so many of today’s streets.
A beautiful pane for maximum gain
Music shop window painting in a game-like format
Window painting isn’t just a fanciful addition to an already successful business. It can help your organisation realise its ambitions as an established and recognisable brand. It increases footfall from passers-by as well as those who haven’t been exposed to the location yet. Thanks to social media and advancing technology, the sky’s the limit with the potential for exposure and shareable content.
Window painting is also one of the most efficient ways to set the tone for your organisation, both inside and outside, optimising an otherwise unused and neglected space. At WeTheSeeds, we can help you take advantage of this potential and turn a simple window into a portal of opportunity.
So why not find out more?
So why not find out more about our London-based Creative Art Agency, specialising in public art marketing and public realm arts management?
Find out more about how we can help you connect with your community, we work throughout the 32 London boroughs and throughout the United Kingdom so why not find out more today?
