The Surprisingly Important Decision of Gondola Color

Walk into almost any retail store, and you probably won't notice the color of the gondola shelving. 

That's typically a good thing.

Customers aren't there to admire the shelving. They're there to notice what's sitting on it.

But for the store planner, merchandiser, or retail owner choosing that shelving, color deserves more thought than simply deciding what looks best on a rendering. It affects appearance, maintenance, replacement options, and even what those fixtures may be worth when you no longer need them.

After years of buying, selling, installing, removing, and reusing gondola, I've developed some pretty strong opinions about the four colors we encounter most often: beige, black, white, and gray. 

Yes, apparently you can develop strong opinions about shelving colors. Spend enough years around gondola and it happens.

Beige: The Vanilla of Retail Shelving 

There's a reason we've encountered so much beige gondola over the years.

It works.

Beige is forgiving. It hides minor dust, scuffs, and everyday wear reasonably well, while its warm, neutral appearance blends into almost any retail environment without fighting for attention.

It also has an enormous practical advantage: availability.

Because there is so much beige gondola in the marketplace, replacement shelves and components are generally easier to find on the secondary market. That matters when you're expanding a department or trying to match the color of an existing run several years later.

Common colors also tend to have a broader reuse and resale market when you're eventually finished with them.

Beige is the vanilla of retail shelving. Tried, tested, and true. Nothing flashy, pretentious, or particularly exciting.

Nobody has ever stopped in a store aisle and whispered, "Wow. Look at that beige gondola."

Mission accomplished.

Black: Sophisticated—But Demanding 

Black gondola can look fantastic. 

We've seen it work particularly well in liquor stores, wine departments, and specialty retail. Combined with good lighting, black creates contrast and can make colorful packaging, glass bottles, and premium merchandise stand out beautifully. It can also create a visual boundary around a premium or specialty department.

But black has an enemy: 

Dust.

And dust is undefeated. 

Black doesn't just highlight merchandise. It also highlights fingerprints, dust, scratches, and chips.

Think about a black car. Freshly washed and waxed, it looks spectacular. Give it a few days and suddenly you're wondering where all that dirt came from.

Damage can also be particularly noticeable on black gondola shelving when a scrape through the powder coating exposes lighter metal underneath.

That's why black wouldn't be my first choice for hardware or other environments where heavy, sharp, or abrasive products regularly get dragged across the shelving.

Bright White: Clean, Modern, and Unforgiving 

White sends a completely different message: 

Clean. Bright. Precise. 

There's a reason we've seen it extensively in pharmacies, drug stores, and beauty environments. White reflects light extremely well and provides a neutral background that lets colorful packaging do the talking. 

But here's the irony: The color that communicates cleanliness also requires you to keep it clean.

White shelving has standards. Unfortunately, it expects your store team to maintain them.

Dark scuffs, rub marks, and grime can be immediately noticeable. In a pristine store, white looks terrific. In a poorly maintained store, it can become less of a color choice and more of a witness for the prosecution. 

There's another consideration: matching white isn't always as simple as ordering more white.

Different manufacturers, powder-coat formulations, production runs, and aging can produce subtly different shades. Put a new white shelf into a five-year-old run and you may discover that your “white” shelving is looking a little more “eggshell” compared to the new addition. And your customers can see this distinction, too.

Gray: The One Wearing Work Boots 

Gray is the workhorse of the group. 

Its industrial, rugged appearance makes it a natural fit for hardware, automotive, farm and ranch, trade supply, and other environments where shelving is expected to take some abuse. 

It also does a good job of hiding everyday dust, scratches, and wear, and pairs naturally with exposed steel, concrete, and industrial architectural elements. 

If beige says neutral, black says premium, and white says clean, gray says durable. 

Gray showed up wearing work boots. And for many hardline retailers, that's exactly what you want. 

Don't Choose Gondola Color From a Paint Chip 

Gondola color isn't simply a design decision. It's an operational and asset decision, too.

Before specifying a color, I'd ask:

• What merchandise will be displayed on it?
• How much abuse will the shelving realistically receive?
• How visible will dust, fingerprints, and scratches be?
• Will I need matching components five or ten years from now?
• Is this color readily available in the secondary market?
• Could these fixtures eventually be redeployed?
• When I'm finally finished with them, will anybody else want them?

Quality gondola can have a remarkably long life. We've seen fixtures survive remodels, relocations, closures, and changes in ownership and still go back into service somewhere else.

So while it's natural to focus on opening day, Future You may have some fairly strong opinions about the decisions Present You is making.

Especially when Future You needs 50 matching shelves to open a new store or freshen up a section without re-outfitting the whole operation.

Sometimes Boring Is Brilliant 

There isn't one correct color for every retailer.

A wine department may look spectacular in black. A pharmacy or beauty department may benefit from white. A hardware or farm-and-ranch store can look completely at home in gray.

And sometimes, plain old beige wins.

There's an odd truth about store fixtures:

The better they do their job, the less anyone notices them. 

Gondola is a little like a good offensive line. Nobody bought a ticket to watch it, but everything falls apart when it doesn't do its job.

So, choose your color based on more than what looks best in the rendering. Think about maintenance, merchandise, replacement components, redeployment, and eventual resale.

At the end of the day, gondola is a supporting actor. The merchandise is the star. 

Nobody should leave your store talking about how magnificent the shelving looked in aisle seven. 

They should leave with something that was sitting on it. 

If you're sourcing gondola and want to get it right—color included—we stock an extensive selection of Lozier and Lozier-compatible shelving in a variety of colors. We custom-pull orders to match your floor plan, and can modify components to suit what you're building. Give us a call next time you're expanding, opening, or remodeling. Odds are, we have what you need ready to ship.