On the surface, lighting looks like a comfortable category to sell online. Most fittings fit in a box a courier can carry, and a pendant shade can weigh under a kilo. The hard part is everything a photograph leaves out. Is the bulb included, and which cap does it take? Will it dim on the switch already on the wall? How far does it hang, and can it go in a shower room? A buyer who guesses wrong either sends the fitting back or pays an electrician to come out twice.
This guide looks at what published figures say about lighting sales, where lighting retailers lose money, and what a fitting’s product page should answer. It also covers the platform choices that follow. It draws on market reports and on my own check of UK lighting product pages in October 2026. I say where data is UK, where it comes from elsewhere, and where there is simply none.
What the market figures say, and the gaps in them
I could not find a usable figure for the share of UK lighting bought online, or for lighting return rates. The reports that might hold those numbers are paywalled, redacted or do not split sales by channel. Any page quoting an online share for UK lighting should name its source.
What the sources do give is the shape of the UK market. A UK lighting market report for 2022 to 2026, summarised by Electronic Specifier in November 2022, found:
- Electrical wholesalers accounted for 36% of sales (period not stated). That is a trade channel, mostly offline.
- Luminaires made up 61% of market value, lamps 25%, and controls and components 14%.
- LED products rose from 52% of the market in 2016 to 88% in 2021. The report summary does not say whether that is by value or volume.
- Market value fell around 16% in 2020 and rose around 2% in 2021.
- Ecommerce operators were expected to gain share, but no number was given.
Three practical points follow. A large part of lighting is bought through trade routes, so many lighting sites serve electricians and homeowners at once. Fittings, not bulbs, carry most of the value, and fittings are where finish, size and shade choices sit. And the move to LED changed what buyers have to check. In an integrated LED fitting the light source is built in, so its colour temperature, brightness and dimming cannot be fixed later by changing a bulb.
There is also a general warning about product pages. Baymard Institute, a commercial UX research firm, rates 51% of the 344 leading US and European sites in its product page benchmark as “mediocre” or worse, and none as “perfect”. That is not a lighting figure. Lighting pages carry more technical detail than most, though, so I would not expect them to be the exception.
Where lighting retailers lose money
Returns that start with a missing fact
With no lighting return data available, the causes have to be reasoned from the products. In typical practice, a fitting turns out to be wrong for one of a handful of reasons:
- the buyer assumed a bulb was included, or bought one with the wrong cap (E27, E14, B22, GU10, G9);
- it does not dim, or it flickers or hums on the existing dimmer;
- the light is warmer or cooler than expected, because the colour temperature was never stated;
- the drop is too long for the ceiling height, or cannot be shortened;
- its IP rating is too low for the bathroom or garden it was bought for;
- the shade looks far bigger or smaller once hung than it did on a white background.
Every item on that list is an information gap, and each one can be closed on the product page.
The electrician’s visit
Fixed fittings are usually installed by an electrician. When a fitting turns out to be wrong, the cost lands on the buyer as a wasted callout, and on the retailer as a return of an opened, possibly part-assembled item. Ceiling plate size matters here too. A small canopy may not cover the marks left by the old fitting, and a heavy chandelier needs a fixing the ceiling can carry.
Stock held by someone else
Many specialist lighting retailers sell designer brands they order in when a sale is made. Lead times then depend on the supplier and can differ by finish. One specialist page I checked showed “UK delivery usually 1-2 days” and, further down, a lead time of 3 to 4 weeks for the same fitting. A buyer cannot tell which to believe, and either answer could produce a cancellation.
Trade and project orders
Electricians, contractors and lighting designers buy differently from homeowners. They typically want trade prices, quantities in tens, spec sheets and photometric data, and quotes against a schedule of fittings. With wholesalers holding 36% of sales in the report above, a site that offers only a public basket may miss much of the trade side.
What 5 UK lighting product pages showed (October 2026)
In October 2026 I checked eight UK lighting product pages, from a department store and a flat-pack brand to design specialists and an online lighting retailer. Seven returned readable text. I left two of those out: one described a different product from the one its URL named, and the other listed a dimension that looked like a data-entry error. That leaves five, a small sample. The check was text-based, so a script-driven 3D viewer would not have shown up.
| What the page offered | Pages (of 5) |
|---|---|
| Dimensions in text | 5 |
| Returns terms stated on the page | 4 |
| More than one colour or finish | 3 |
| Lamp cap or bulb type stated | 3 |
| Whether it dims stated | 3 |
| Lead time stated | 3 (one with two conflicting figures) |
| Quote or contact route | 3 |
| Colour temperature stated | 2 |
| Video | 2 |
| Reviews with a rating or count | 1 |
| Finance shown on the product itself | 1 |
| Downloadable spec sheet detected | 0 |
| Size or drop choice on the page | 0 |
| 360, 3D or AR detected | 0 |
| Configurator, builder or bulb finder | 0 |
Every page gave dimensions. The technical facts a lighting buyer needs were patchier. Only two of five stated a colour temperature, three said whether the fitting dims, and none had a spec sheet download that the check could detect. On the page with the widest choice, each swatch opened a separate product page, so comparing finishes meant reloading. One page showed unrendered template code beside its price. Another depended on JavaScript to show any stock or delivery information.
In separate lab tests of five UK lighting product pages, the median Lighthouse performance score was 51 out of 100. That is covered in lighting website performance.
What a lighting product page needs
From those gaps and the way fittings are installed, a lighting product page should give:
- A technical table in plain text. Lamp cap, lamps included or not, maximum wattage or LED wattage, lumen output, colour temperature, colour rendering, dimmable or not, IP rating and weight.
- Integrated or replaceable, said plainly. For integrated LED fittings, state whether the driver or LED module can be replaced.
- Drop and ceiling guidance. Minimum and maximum drop, whether the cable can be shortened, and the canopy diameter.
- Dimmer notes. Which type of dimmer the fitting suits, and any you have tested it with.
- Lit and unlit photographs, plus one in a room with something familiar for scale.
- A bulb offer at the basket with the right cap, and a quantity matched to the number of lamp holders.
- The spec sheet and fitting instructions as downloads, for the electrician.
- One lead time per finish, taken from the supplier, never two figures that disagree.
- A trade route: trade prices for logged-in accounts, quantity breaks and a quote form for schedules.
Platform and operations
Lighting ranges can outgrow standard variants faster than they appear to. A cluster pendant with three canopy finishes, four shade colours, two cable colours and a choice of three, five or seven drops already has 72 combinations. Check your platform’s current variant limits before modelling that as variants. A common approach is to keep stock-critical choices, such as finish, as true variants and record the rest as order details. For WooCommerce, I cover this in variable products at scale.
Other points that typically apply to lighting sites:
- Technical attributes as data. Store kelvin, lumens, wattage, cap and IP rating as structured fields with consistent units. Filters, comparisons and bulb suggestions all depend on it.
- Bulbs as linked products. Link each fitting to the bulbs that suit its cap and wattage, so the suggestion is right rather than generic.
- Trade accounts. Separate price lists, quote requests and saved schedules for electricians and designers. See B2B ecommerce.
- Fragile delivery. Glass shades and chandeliers need packaging and a clear breakage claim process, stated before purchase.
- Supplier feeds. Where stock is ordered in, feed supplier lead times into the product page instead of typing them by hand.
Where a configurator fits
A configurator earns its place when one fitting can be built several ways: canopy and shade finishes chosen separately, a number of drops, a cable length, a choice of glass. It also helps when buyers keep asking how a finish will look switched on. My lighting configurator demo goes into this in more detail, and the lighting configurator demos hold image-based examples on illustrative fittings. For how technical filters and finish URLs affect search, see lighting ecommerce SEO.
Where to start
Take your ten best-selling fittings and read each product page as a buyer would. Can you tell whether it comes with a bulb, whether it dims, how warm the light is, how far it hangs and where it can go? Any page that fails one of those questions is a likely source of returns and phone calls. If you want help working through it, get in touch. I reply within two UK working days.
Sources
- Electronic Specifier, LED technologies drive a 36% increase in market share, 15 November 2022, summarising the Lighting Market Report UK 2022-2026. UK; periods for some figures not stated.
- Baymard Institute, Product details page UX research, checked 2026. Vendor-authored benchmark of 344 US and European sites; not lighting-specific.
- Retailer product page check: 8 UK lighting product pages, October 2026. 7 readable, 5 counted.