Trouble With Misleading Dressing Rooms At Stores A.K.A. The Fitting Room Trap

The rows of women’s swimwear on the racks in stores can make it harder to find just what you’re looking for.

You walk into a store like Macy’s, Anne Taylor, Old Navy, Anthropologie or pretty much any large chain clothing store. With some struggle you stride past a gorgeous blue dress. You’re there for one thing and one thing only: A new bathing suit. They can be some of the most stressful apparel to shop for because they reveal so much more skin than usual and show the details of your womanly physique.

But you’re ready to do the swimsuit shopping, so you make your way to the women’s swimwear section. There are three, maybe four metal racks with rows of one-pieces, bikinis, halter tops, bandeaus, two piece swimsuits, swimdresses and what seems like every other kind of lady’s swimwear imaginable.

While sometimes you do look as good as you think, when trying on a swimsuit, Beware! Fitting rooms can be deceiving

You spot a gorgeous black and pink one-piece bathing suit on a hanger. Of course… they don’t have your size. You put it back on the rack disappointed but still determined. You pull down 5 or 6 bathing suits in what you’re pretty sure is your size each with different patterns and prints. With high hopes you make your way to the fitting room.

You model each swimsuit for yourself in the mirror probably finding one or two pieces that look better than the others and you’ll think “Wow I love these bathing suits. I look better in them than I thought I could, I better hurry up and buy these two.” So you put your street clothes back on, and head to the register to pay. You take your suits home, try them on again but those same swimsuits that looked so good on you in the store just an hour or two ago suddenly don’t give you the same feeling of confidence you had in the dressing room.

You just became yet another victim of the Fitting Room Trap.

There’s a ton of crafty tricks stores use to get you, the consumer, to buy more clothing. From the before you even walk through the doors to after you make you purchase, these large stores have thought of ways to wring the most dollars they can from you. We could go on for days discussing the tactics they use but we want to focus on just

The Fitting Room Trap is a manipulative practice many clothing retail chains do in one form or another. It combines psychology, marketing and even a little bit of film making to make you think that you look thinner and better in their apparel than you actually do. While this boost of confidence in the dressing room may seem like a good thing, it in truth holds you back from truly looking your absolute best. You’re much more likely to wind up something you just like as opposed to something that you love.

So what do they do in the dressing room that manipulates you?

Dressing room mirrors are often tilted and curved making you look thinner than you are.

The Mirrors

One of the most common tricks clothing retail stores use is the tilt of the mirror. Many dressing rooms feature mirrors that slightly tilt towards you at the bottom and subtly tilt away from you at the top. This ruses produces an illusion of you appearing longer and leaner. Some stores even use mirrors that are curved in ever so slightly to make you look a little bit thinner. Think of it like a funhouse mirror, that distorts your body to make it look thinner an therefore more likely to buy, rather than it being there for fun.

The Music

The next time you’re in a clothing store clothes your eyes and listen to the music playing over the speakers. Chances are it will either be easy songs that sound somewhat like elevator music or somewhat nostalgic music. Think how often you’ve at a store you’ve heard that 90′s alt rock song that you haven’t heard in years. Or how around Christmas time it’s all Christmas music. The idea behind these music types is to put you in a more familiar and comfortable mood and therefore more likely to spend your money at the store.

The Stuff On The Walls

Most dressing room areas feature simple paintings and smiling people on the walls. The simple paintings and smiling people have a simple purpose to make you calm and happy. And when you’re calm and happy you’re more likely to spend money.

The other thing you’ll often find on the dressing room walls are sales the stores are currently running. These sales posters makes you think the items you’ve picked out are a even better deal and more likely to buy.

The Stall Doors

You will rarely come across full sized doors on the dressing room stalls of larger chain stores. They’re often either curtain or a half door. This is not an accident. It’s partially done so you can see if someone is using the stall. But it has another benefit for the stores and not for you. As employees and other customers walk past you’ll often get the feeling that you’re taking too long and you might think you need to hurry up and pick something. This kind of pressure leads you to rush your shopping decisions and settle for something you don’t truly love. When it comes to bathing suits, if you don’t really love it you won’t wear it with as much confidence. Half of looking good in a swimsuit is your confidence. This is a large part of why it’s better to shop online for swimwear.

Retail Store Dressing Rooms often have deceptive soft lighting that causes you think what you’re trying on makes you look good

The Lighting

Here’s where a little bit of movie making magic comes in. Most fitting rooms are illuminated by several sources of light. Some overhead and some frontal lighting. The placement of these lights isn’t coincidence. Retail chains take a page right out of the filmmaker’s handbook. By using the different angles of light, unsightly shadows are removed making you look less frumpy. The overhead lights are often placed just behind where you would stand when trying clothes on to give you some glamorous classic Hollywood back lighting. There’s about as much thought put into dressing room lighting as there in in film.

Many swimsuit and clothing stores also often use soft, amber lighting that makes even a less attractive woman look hot. This light makes your skin look better by evening out your skin tone. But this soft lighting creates one of the biggest issues when it comes to trying on women’s swimwear. You’re not going to be wearing your swimsuit in soft dimmed lighting, you’ll be basking under the bright sun. So these dimly lit dressing rooms don’t give you an accurate impression of how the suit looks on you.

The fitting room trap is something women of all ages fall into. It even happens to the most vigilant of shoppers. This trap can be especially detrimental when it comes to swimsuit shopping. In order for you to look good in your bathing suit you need to be confident in it. You need to love the real way you look in it not just how it looks in the dressing room.

That’s why ordering swimwear online from a company like SwimsuitsDirect.com is such a smart idea. You can find a huge collection of women’s, junior’s, girl’s and plus size swimsuits. Much larger then the selection in a store. You can order as many bathing suits as you want and try them on in the comfort of your own home, where you’re not being manipulated to buy and you can make a well thought out decision. Then you just send back any swimwear you don’t want thanks to our free shipping and free returns.

Check out our other blog posts on tips for finding the right swimsuit.

Don’t let the stores trick you with their crafty dressing rooms. Buy your swimwear online from SwimsuitsDirect.com.