Digital marketing agency Unframed Digital has released its 2026 industry report, *Transparency Wins Favor: How Product Brands Build Trust with Designers Online*. Based on an in-depth survey of 783 U.S. design professionals, the report dissects the core logic and key trends behind how product brands earn designers' trust in the digital space.
The data clearly illustrates the online procurement habits of design professionals: nearly all (98%–99%) use online channels to source products, with 54% relying on organic search to discover products that meet their needs. However, issues regarding trust and information barriers remain significant—59% of respondents admit to struggling to trust the actual quality of products found online, while 51% cite a lack of transparency in pricing. Furthermore, 68% of designers evaluate ten or fewer products before making a purchasing decision; 64% want full access to product specifications before engaging with sales representatives; and 38% identify downloadable Revit family files and 3D models as the most useful website features.
The report highlights that transparency has become a primary driver in product specification and selection, fundamentally reshaping how lighting and architectural product brands earn market trust. For manufacturers, the takeaway is clear: to secure a spot in a designer's specifications, they must provide designers, engineers, and project owners with a clear, intuitive understanding of a product's true attributes and value.
Long-standing industry issues—such as obscured technical parameters, inconsistent file standards, vague marketing language, and the difficulty of making side-by-side product comparisons—render traditional approaches obsolete. Today, specifiers prioritize clear, accessible performance data, complete transparency regarding materials and traceability, and empirical evidence demonstrating a product's ability to consistently deliver on performance promises over the long term.
This shift toward transparency is far more than a moral stance or a marketing tactic; fundamentally, it serves to mitigate risk across the entire supply chain. When product data is open and transparent, designers can compare and select products with greater confidence, contractors can significantly reduce unexpected issues during installation, and owners can accurately assess long-term product value. In a market landscape that increasingly prioritizes total lifecycle costs, ease of operation and maintenance, and regulatory compliance, transparency has emerged as a core competitive advantage for enterprises.
This emphasis on transparency stems from the rigorous pressures facing building project teams—ranging from energy standards and sustainability goals to health and well-being requirements and procurement compliance—which have collectively raised the bar for product documentation and verification. Even a product with superior technical performance risks being displaced by a competitor offering clear, easily verifiable information if its own evaluation process is cumbersome or opaque.
This phenomenon is particularly pronounced in the lighting industry, where designers must weigh multiple metrics—such as energy efficiency, control capabilities, color rendering, glare control, and scene adaptability. Products whose marketing claims align precisely with publicly available test data gain significant credibility; conversely, high-quality products may be excluded from selection lists simply because information is incomplete or difficult to interpret.
Furthermore, transparency breaks down collaborative barriers within project teams. Standardized, clear product documentation enables architects, lighting designers, engineers, distributors, and contractors to work from a shared information base. This effectively shortens review cycles and minimizes the need for revisions, allowing procurement decisions to be driven by actual product performance rather than sales rhetoric.
The report suggests that manufacturers aiming to maintain competitiveness should embed the principle of transparency throughout the entire product development process, rather than treating it as an afterthought. Specific implementation strategies include: publishing standardized, unified data sheets; proactively providing authoritative third-party test reports; clearly citing the evidence behind marketing claims; simplifying product submission documents to facilitate easy side-by-side comparisons; and anticipating potential questions from specifiers to ensure proactive information disclosure.
From a long-term industry perspective, a fundamental rule prevails: the market consistently favors products that readily inspire trust. While transparency cannot replace product innovation, price advantages, or design quality, it serves as the critical factor determining whether these core strengths are recognized by the market and acknowledged by designers. Thus, transparency is not merely a stepping stone to gaining industry attention but a key driver for capturing market share.
