ValueLights
rebrand.

A full digital rebrand for one of the UK’s largest online lighting retailers.

I helped transform ValueLights from a colourful, promotion-heavy identity into a cleaner and much more recognisable ecommerce brand. Working from the new brand guidelines, I translated the identity into a scalable digital design system across the homepage, category pages, campaign content, navigation and supporting brand pages.

The biggest visual shift was moving away from the previous rainbow palette and putting ValueLights’ mustard yellow at the centre of the identity, supported by warm neutrals, bold typography and lifestyle-led photography.

ValueLights had evolved significantly since I first joined the business, but its visual identity had become increasingly inconsistent. The previous branding relied on a large rainbow colour palette, handwritten typography and bold promotional graphics, creating a very playful look but making it difficult to build a consistent experience across a growing ecommerce website.

As part of the wider ValueLights rebrand, I helped translate the new brand direction into a digital-first visual system and roll it out across the website.

The goal was not to lose the personality ValueLights was known for, but to simplify it. The new identity focused much more heavily on the brand’s mustard yellow, supported by nearly black, white and warm neutral tones. This created a stronger visual signature while allowing the products and photography to become the hero.

The existing website had been built up over several years, with different campaigns, colour combinations, typography styles and components gradually being added over time.

The rebrand meant more than updating a logo or changing a few colours. It required looking at the entire customer experience and finding a way to make hundreds of pages and components feel like they belonged to the same brand.

I needed to take the new guidelines and turn them into something that worked practically across a busy ecommerce environment, from promotional homepages and category pages to reusable content blocks, navigation, product listings and supporting brand pages.

One of the biggest changes was simplifying the colour system.

The old ValueLights branding used teal, green, yellow, blue, purple, pink and orange across its marketing. The new direction moved away from this rainbow approach and gave mustard yellow a much stronger role as the recognisable brand colour.

I paired this with white, off-white and nearly black backgrounds to create more breathing space, using mustard for key highlights, calls to action and branded graphic elements rather than competing colours throughout every section.

The official guidelines describe the new palette as purposeful, energetic and warm, which became the basis for how I approached the website redesign.

Rather than treating each page individually, I developed a more consistent visual language that could scale across the website.

This included:

• Establishing clearer typography and content hierarchy
• Standardising spacing, headings, buttons and promotional components
• Introducing the new mustard-led colour palette throughout the customer journey
• Reducing unnecessary decorative styling so product imagery could stand out
• Applying the new graphic flashes, lines and branded details in a more considered way
• Creating reusable modules that could work across seasonal campaigns
• Updating imagery and art direction so photography felt warmer, more aspirational and more consistent
• Designing layouts responsively across desktop and mobile

The brand guidelines intentionally use graphic lines, flashes and circles to give the identity personality, while also stressing that these elements should support the composition rather than become the hero. That principle became particularly important when adapting the identity for ecommerce.

Lighting is naturally a very visual product category, so one of my priorities was giving imagery more space.

The old website often placed products against highly saturated colours and promotional graphics. In the new design, lifestyle photography, room sets and product imagery were given much more prominence, supported by cleaner layouts and neutral backgrounds.

This also aligned with the updated photography direction, which encouraged warm, relatable lifestyle imagery and inspirational room sets that show products naturally within the home.

The rebrand was rolled out across the wider ecommerce experience rather than existing as a single campaign.

I worked across:

The result was a much more recognisable ValueLights.

Instead of relying on a different combination of colours and styles for every campaign, the brand could now flex around one strong visual identity. Mustard yellow became an immediate brand cue, photography became more prominent and the overall website felt cleaner, warmer and more considered.

Most importantly, the redesign created a system rather than a collection of individual pages. New campaigns, products and content could be added without constantly reinventing the visual language.

The brand did not stay static. As the website evolved, the design system evolved with it.

The rebrand continued to evolve when we launched a new website.

One of the biggest changes was typography. Neulis was originally introduced as the primary brand typeface, but as the digital experience developed, I reduced its use to a more considered accent font and moved the secondary typeface into the main role across the website and email.

From a UX perspective, this was the right move. The priority was making sure the brand remained accessible, easy to read and enjoyable to use across different devices, screen sizes and customer touchpoints, without sacrificing its personality.

Neulis was still used where it added character and helped reinforce the brand, particularly within key headings and campaign moments, but the wider experience became cleaner and more usable by relying on the more versatile secondary typeface for the majority of content.

At the same time, I also introduced updated photography guidelines, which helped bring the wider visual identity together. Product imagery, lifestyle photography, campaign creative and web design began following a much more consistent direction, creating a website that felt more cohesive, polished and intentional.

The result was a more mature version of the ValueLights brand. It still felt recognisable and distinctive, but the design system had evolved to work better in a real ecommerce environment, balancing brand personality with usability, accessibility and consistency.

Rather than following the brand guidelines rigidly, I adapted the system for digital use, making considered decisions around typography, accessibility and photography to improve the customer experience while retaining the core identity.