Bed Bath & Beyond hired us to photograph its first new store, on Bell Road in Glendale, Arizona, before the doors opened. It is the first new standalone Bed Bath & Beyond since the original company's 2023 bankruptcy, and it opened to the public on November 7, 2026. We photographed the storefront and twelve interiors while the store was finished, stocked and empty.
A store people already remember
The new store leans into what made the brand familiar. There is a full towel wall, dressed beds, a kitchen section, merchandise laid out room by room, and yes, the 20% coupon, which hangs over the kitchen aisle in one of our wide shots. The store also carries organization products from The Container Store, including an elfa Studio for closets and shelving.
That is what the photos needed to show: a store that feels like the one people remember, where everything is clearly new.
Shooting before opening
Photographing a store before opening day has one big advantage: nobody is in the way. Every aisle is faced, every shelf is full, and every display is exactly as the team built it. There are no customers to wait for and no carts in the frame.
It also means the pictures have to carry the whole story on their own. An empty store can look cold, so we framed each area around the displays that bring it to life: the blue "let's DREAM" bed under the bedding sign, a dressed bed beside a white holiday tree, the "let's COOK" wall behind the Cuisinart cookware, and the elfa Studio vignettes.
The towel wall
Four of the twelve interiors are the towel wall, and that is on purpose. Floor to ceiling, white through tan, brown, blue, purple and teal, it is the most recognizable thing in the store and the one shot people will look for. We photographed it straight on, at an angle down the full length of the wall, and close up.
What retail store photography needs to get right
Retail interiors are mostly straight lines: shelving, ceiling tracks, signs and aisles. If the verticals lean or the shelves bow, the whole store looks off. So the work is in the geometry, keeping lines straight and aisles leading the eye, and in the light, keeping a bright white store from turning gray or blue. Signs need to be readable and product colors need to look the way they do in person, because that is what shoppers will compare against when they walk in.
The storefront is the simplest frame and in some ways the most important: the full facade, the sign square and level, and an Arizona sky behind it.
Opening a store or a new space?
Store openings, remodels, restaurants and offices all need the same thing before launch: clean, accurate photos of the space while it looks its best. Thank you to Bed Bath & Beyond for bringing us in for this one. Here is more of our commercial and architectural photography in Phoenix.