Changes in fashion colours from year to year are not only about clothes but also about the products we sell in our industry. We all know that suppliers who get their products in the right shades can make a killing; those that get it wrong see their products languish on the shop floor.

However, it’s not just what we wear or have. Colour in our environment affects our feelings and our emotions. Most of us, whether we accept it or not, are influenced by colour. And the mood we are in can affect whether we buy or not! We might buy heavy rock music from a dark and dingy store but not our nursery goods! White gives the feeling of being clean – and we all want to buy from a shop that is clean. Bright reds and oranges are exciting; blue is tranquil. Black can be classic or dull! Green is supposed to be the colour of money and to be the first choice of banks for their logos and literature!

Emma Jones from Coo Chi Coo believes that introducing colour into the store is very important. “We have two stores, the largest of which has 14 room sets. We paint the side walls white or cream and the back wall in a bright colour. For example, one of the rooms has a bright orange back wall which picks out the orange in the bedding on the dark wood King Parrot furniture. The room set with the bright green back wall picks out the splash of green in the bedding. The room set which has a back wall with psychedelic blues, turquoise, silver and white is contrasted with another that has a plain mid-brown wall with Kidmsmill Avignon furniture and cream Lollipop Lane bedding. Lighting is very important and each room is on a dimmer switch so customers can see the room in different lighting.

“The store as a whole is very bright and subtly decorated with walls that are painted cream or white. The floor is light grey tiles. The lighting in the main shop are bright spotlights which mainly shine downwards, though we do highlight the shop name and logo on the walls. It’s a very modern look using, for example, white scaffolding to display the wheeled goods.

“These days, the pushchairs are very bright in colour with things like the Xplory in both red and blue. Many other pushchairs and buggies have bright colours; lots of blues, pinks and bright orange. In one store we have a Bugaboo Chameleon with a bright blue base and an orange top! It’s very eye catching but not for everyone so we also have a more conservative pram on display so as not to put people off!

“Our window displays are mainly themed around a range so the colour follows from that. At the moment we have one window display dedicated to Bloom; another is the new range from Lollipop Lane with a green backdrop, again picking up the colour from within the bedding. Another window has fairy lights in a voile cover. Sounds strange when you talk about it but it does work.”

Andrea Harrison of Lullabys points out that “the birth of baby is a happy event and therefore we need to keep our stores tastefully cheerful. Our new store has magnolia walls, very neutral, with beech wood panelling. The floor has Lullaby Blue carpet tiles. It has a clean, very contemporary feel. In any nursery store, it is the pushchairs that dominate. When I started in the trade, pushchairs were very bright – teal, lime green etc. But a few years ago, the predominant colours in wheeled goods were black, greys and browns. A very boring mix and it was very difficult to make the store bright and welcoming and get colour into the shop. Now bright colours are making a comeback in wheeled goods and we have lemon, oranges and lime greens. We just have to be careful they don’t clash! However, bedding still tends to be more subdued. We have one long wall where the bedding is displayed and no one colour predominates; it tends to be pastel. “We don’t have any display windows in the new shop but in the old place we used to theme our windows by colour. We’d do, say, pink one time with a variety of products which were pink.”

With any shop it is difficult to keep up with the trends of fashion. Perhaps the wisest course is to leave that to the product we sell, but it is always as well to remember that colours affect the ambience in the store and the ambience affects what sells.