Three years after revamping its flagship Arlington location, Dominion Lighting recently opened the doors to its remodeled 4,000-square-foot Chantilly showroom.
It took eight months, but the low ceilings, dated brown carpet squares, and dangling lights are gone. In their place is an industrial-style open ceiling, painted in the store’s signature Benjamin Moore Witching Hour charcoal gray, which also adorns the walls, charcoal-colored polished cement floors, and carefully curated lights grouped by finish, look, and feel.
“I essentially did all of the drawings myself, basing them off of Arlington, taking the things that we’ve learned from that and seeing it live and breathe,” said Matt Rowan, vice president of residential lighting. “This looks more like a gallery, and it makes the fixtures themselves feel like art.”
In fact, it is a gallery, featuring local artists’ work that rotates them every three months. It’s a tack Dominion added in Arlington that’s paid off. Within a year of reopening that store, profits grew by 20 percent and then 30 percent the next year, Rowan said.
“When people are designing their homes, they’re looking at creating an entire space,” he says. “They’re primed to get these original art pieces that they might never consider otherwise. It’s a win-win situation for everyone.”
This is the first major renovation for the 37-year-old Chantilly showroom, which reopened June 8. Consultation tables have tops designed to facilitate huddling over layout drawings and an attached low platform that lets customers examine fixtures up close. For particularly large projects, Rowan consults with clients in a private room that seats eight.
The store carries 300 lines, including Tala, a U.K. brand available on the U.S. East Coast, only in New York and here. Prices range from about $150 for a sconce to $40,000 for handcrafted custom pieces from Art + Alchemy lighting designers. Most fixtures fall in the $500 to $2,000 range, Rowan says.
An unexpected side effect of the revamps has been an expanded list of the lighting store’s offerings to include furniture and accessories.
“I literally have a three-page list of the tiles, the hand soap that we use, the company that did the polishing of the floors, the paint specifications,” Rowan says. “Design makes a difference. If you can create an experience that inspires people, they want all the components of it.”
14605 Lee-Jackson Hwy., Chantilly, dominionelectric.com/location/chantilly-lighting-showroom/
Feature image by Matt Rowan
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