I’m not in the US but what makes you feel this is run down?
The ceiling looks incomplete with no wall and the color scheme is drab and dreary.
For large chains in the suburbs this is totally normal. They’re basically warehouses in a sea of parking lots filled with shelves and racks. Sometimes there’s carpeted areas in between the tile walkways or displays that go up high enough that it feels enclosed. For smaller or more urban stores, you don’t see this kind of construction.
Ceiling design is intentional, it’s cheap and it maintains temperature much better than a drop ceiling or whatever else you’d want up there.
Walmart normally has skylights too to let in natural light but I can’t see any in the pic. That looks like a poorly maintained Walmart.
You’re in a Walmart.
They claim to be cheaper so they can have that drabby distopian look.
In the good parts of town, they look nicer. In the poor parts of town they’re legit worse than that.
Fwiw, I’ll pay the extra dollar per shopping cart for the superior look of a target. Target is generally cleaner and crisper looking. As always there are exceptions to that rule.
Target has been going downhill. Lots of crap in the aisles now, and inventory is stocked during the day. It’s like shopping in a warehouse.
Also the implication that countries outside the US don’t have dumpy stores is laughable. Europe’s got plenty of stuff like this, just usually not as large. Here in the Netherlands we have shops like Action and grocery stores like Lidl and they’re a shitshow inside most of the time.
The “unfinished” ceilings are common in warehouse stores. It is largely a feature of practicality. Since electrical, water and ventilation typical run overhead and needs to be serviced occasionally, putting drop ceiling tiles up would make them difficult to work with, particularly when you need a scissor lift (rather than a ladder) to reach the utility lines. But it also has some benefits like higher lighting fixtures which means less direct/more ambient lighting, fewer places for pests to roam in the building or dust to build up, etc. It may just be that I’m used to it, but it doesn’t bother me as an aesthetic. Drop ceiling is more common in smaller stores.
Not sure what you mean by the drab colors. The floor looks like it could be whiter and probably needs a polish, but the blues look nice enough to me. There’s not much to decorate though as most of the story is wide open with very few surfaces that aren’t covered in products for sale.
Pretty much anywhere you have overhead storage with forklifts, you’re going to not have a drop ceiling. Otherwise you’d just have people hitting the damn ceiling with the forklift. They already hit the sprinklers enough.
That ceiling is supposed to be that way. The insulation is on top of the roof deck, and the lack of a suspended ceiling gives it a more open feel. That’s why they painted all of the roof structure white (it also allows them to use less power for lighting). Walmart has a lot of problems, but store design isn’t one (although retail layout is, IMO).
We have a few of these warehouse type shops in the UK, Costco, Matalan, that sort of thing, it’s not styled like a high street shop would be.
My local Asda is like this, but they’re Walmart now. I’ve got a feeling that the Tesco is too, but I haven’t been for a while.
Ignorant American here: what looks “run down” about it?
Nah, usually some of the lights are out and there is mushy spots on the ceiling.
The big box store chain esthetic. Ostensibly about passing value onto the customer (we put a roof over the products, what more do you want?) but probably more about maximizing shareholder value.
In fairness from the perspective of someone who has had to pull a lot of network cable in buildings before, drywall ceilings SUCK, drop ceilings are fine but can really be a pain, and open ceilings are chefs kiss soooooo much easier to work with. I promise that’s true for your HVAC, fire sprinklers, electrical/lighting, and plumbing guys too. Particularly when you have to work on a scissor lift for those high ceilings, rather than on a 6ft ladder. From a practicality standpoint, open ceilings are way better for maintenance and new installations.
Pretty much par for the course for a Walmart/any other store like it. Also they look exactly the same in Canada. Cruddy lighting, cheap beige laminate floors… Bleh.
