Commercial Tenant Improvements for Salons and Barbershops, Wicks Electric Vancouver BC
Adam Wicks, Wicks Electric
http://wickselectric.ca
(604) 765-8439
Mark: Hey,it’s Mark from Top Local, we’re here with Adam Wicks of Wicks Electric, Vancouver’s highest reviewed electrical contractors being bombarded with inquiries right now because they are growing so fast and they have such a good reputation. How’re you doing Adam?
Adam: I’m great Mark, how are you?
Mark: I’m good. So we’re going to talk about commercial tenant improvements again, maybe specifically about salons and some of the experiences you’ve had working with that. Is that right today?
Adam: Yeah that’s correct Mark, what we’re noticing right now is we’re getting a whole influx of tenant improvement projects. One we’ve done commonly has been barbershops and salons. Now because they’re servicing customers, they’re cutting their hair and of course people take their hair very seriously, they need the proper lighting so they can see their product and their clients properly. So what’s happened in the past is we’ve been presented two times with these large scale salons that had lighting plans in place, I went through it and it really didn’t seem efficient to me, it seemed over done in some areas. So what I was able to do was to go through and to actually work with the client and come up with a  new lighting plan that A) was more cost effective; and B) was going to work much better for the space. So one of those salons is one called High Fidelity, it’s on Commercial Drive, many of you may have heard of it, it’s a large shop. So they had actually purchased, that’s the original store front that you’re looking at, so they had actually purchased a larger shop a few doors down and they gutted it and that was one of the projects where they had an existing lighting plan and I came along and worked with the client and designed a new one. We’ve also done that at another salon in Vancouver and for two other salon barbershops, they’ve come to us as we have the reputation of doing lighting design and we’ve actually drawn up and created a lighting plan for them, it’s something that I’ve really enjoyed in the past.
Mark: So you have a picture actually of the interior of that one, so it shows, maybe if you bring that up, it really shows how the kind of bare fluorescent lights and that’s really quite typical of older salons that we see along the ceiling. So how do you change it when you redesign the lighting plan to make it a little more efficient for people?
Adam: For sure, that’s a great point. This is very common as you can see it’s just bare fluorescents on the ceiling which, this is a little worse than we would typically see, that’s not even coded, you have to have guards, guarding fluorescent bulbs. If you pop a fluorescent bulb there’s actually harmful dust contained inside of them. When we come into a space like this, we just suss it out and with our experience, I know that drop track LED bulb, they illuminate much better than halogen or fluorescent. That’s one of the large benefits of LED bulbs is the actual beams themself, they penetrate further. So you get a halogen, a fluorescent, an incandescent and the actual light and the lumens, they dissipate one, two, three feet out from the light fixture mass, but LED’s they penetrate much further. So what we’ve done in some cases in salons, in other businesses and homes is we’ll come in and swap their existing fixture or bulb with an LED and just that simple fix will get the client what they’re after. But for somewhere like this, we would add front wall sconces to get the front light onto the face of the clients and we would suspend track at a specific position behind the chair as to no cast too many shadows but  to get the back and the top of the client as well. And then from there we like to add in some decorative strip lights and a couple of hanging pendants in the window which tend to bring people in and it illuminates the front of the store.
Mark: And that’s something else to mention that you guys have had that feedback a few times about those, that actually works really well, that foot traffic increases once you’ve done a re-light and a retrofit on tenant improvements, is that right?
Adam: Yeah big time, I mean the other thing is we change the colour temperature usually to more of a 3,000 or a 3,500 which is a little more on the warm yellow side, not too yellow, but just warm enough for it to have that homey vibe to it. So when people walk by a space like that, I’ll go back to the picture here, somewhere like this has that white, hospital, clinic type auto shop energy to it and people tend to want to stay away but when we swap and get that colour temperature to more of that orange, it’s more of a homey glow and people are just more drawn to it, it’s a more comfortable light. People like to spend more time in spaces with that sort of colour temperature as well.
Mark: So if you’re looking for an electrical contractor who really understands lighting design, retro fits, all kinds of projects, all sizes, these are the guys to call in Vancouver - Wicks Electric. They’re Vancouver’s highest rated electrical contractor, Adam is a winner of the Top 30 Under 30 from BC Business Magazine for this year, they’re Tesla’s number one charger installer, the accolades go on and on. These are the guys to call 604-765-8439 or check out their website wickselectric.ca. Thanks Adam.
Adam: Thanks a lot Mark
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