Sky
Transparent LED Screen for Retail: A New Standard in Storefront Storytelling
The transparent LED screen for retail is transforming how brands connect with passers-by. As physical and digital experiences blend, retailers are rethinking their shopfronts—not as passive surfaces, but as programmable, story-driven spaces. These next-generation displays replace static vinyls with motion-led visuals. Consequently, they preserve daylight, maintain architectural elegance, and capture attention at a glance.
More importantly, this shift isn’t only about technology. Instead, it’s about creating emotional moments at street level. A transparent screen does this beautifully. It keeps the view open, draws customers in, and brings product and message together in one seamless window.
About Sky
Sky is one of Europe’s most innovative media and technology companies. With a mission to connect people to brilliant content and services, Sky extends its ambition beyond the screen and into its retail spaces. Each store is a curated environment. It is designed to inform, immerse, and inspire.
Through intuitive experiences and premium presentation, Sky’s retail strategy reflects the same values that drive its products: simplicity, impact, and imagination. That’s why its approach to physical spaces continues to evolve—combining design, storytelling, and digital innovation in equal measure.
The Challenge
Sky didn’t just need a transparent LED screen. Rather, it needed one designed to meet specific retail experience goals—and those goals went far beyond visibility or resolution.
The objective was bold. Sky wanted to place a real Sky Glass TV in the centre of the display window. Then, animated content would appear on a transparent screen, floating with the product and moving in sync. For that to happen, the screen required a custom aperture—engineered with precision to surround the product without interrupting the flow of visual content.
This wasn’t a plug-and-play scenario. Instead, the system had to meet architectural, operational, and creative requirements all at once. It needed to support high-brightness motion content. It had to preserve visibility and daylight. Most importantly, it had to deliver a perfectly timed digital layer that complemented the physical product behind it.
Our Solution: Transparent LED Screen for Retail Integration
To address this, we designed and delivered a tailor-made transparent LED system that merged seamlessly into the store façades at Sky’s flagship locations in Edinburgh, Cardiff, Birmingham and Manchester. The screen itself was custom-engineered, with a central custom aperture, specifically designed to accommodate the physical Sky Glass unit. Around it, animated campaign content plays on the transparent display, perfectly overlaid with the visuals shown on the product itself.
This creates a layered, synchronised effect. In fact, what you see floating in the air isn’t just a graphic. It’s a digital extension of the product behind it. A TV commercial, a user interface, or a brand animation appears to escape the frame and extend into the real world.
Behind the scenes, we delivered much more than hardware. Indeed, we provided an end-to-end content delivery solution—remotely managed, instantly updatable, and fully programmable. The system aligns with Sky’s national marketing strategy, while also allowing for local activations at individual store level. Furthermore, we ensured full integration with Sky’s visual identity and campaign schedules. This gave their teams more flexibility and less operational friction.
From design and technical specification to installation, testing, and long-term content management, we provided a full-service solution. It wasn’t just about putting screens in windows—it was about reimagining those windows entirely.
The Benefits
This transparent LED system doesn’t just improve Sky’s retail façades—it transforms them. It brings light, movement, and storytelling into spaces that were once covered in static vinyl. From the street, campaign content flows across the window. Moreover, it is beautifully synchronised with the Sky Glass TV behind it. It captures attention in seconds and tells a complete, product-linked story without saying a word.
Inside, the change is just as meaningful. Staff benefit from natural light, simplified operations, and a clearer, more welcoming environment. Campaigns can be updated instantly from a central system. As a result, this eliminates the need for printed materials and in-store installation time.
And the result? A modern retail experience that feels fluid, responsive, and distinctly Sky.
As John Magill, European Head of Store Design & Merchandising at Sky, explains: “The transparent screen has allowed us to completely rethink how we use our windows. We’re no longer limited to static graphics—now we can deliver dynamic, product-linked campaigns without losing light, openness or visibility. It’s elegant, impactful, and has become a core part of how we design the customer journey from the street to the store.”
This is not a visual layer. Rather, it’s a living connection between content and product, store and street, brand and customer.
