A storefront is the front part of a store that faces the street, including the entrance, windows, and signs. When you walk down a busy shopping street, you're looking at dozens of storefronts: colorful displays, glass windows showing what's inside, and doors inviting you to enter.

Store owners design their storefronts carefully to attract customers. A bookstore might arrange interesting books in its window, while a bakery's storefront might let people peek at fresh pastries through the glass. The storefront is like the face of a business, the first impression it makes on people walking by.

In cities, historic storefronts often have beautiful details: carved wooden doors, painted signs, or decorative tiles. Some neighborhoods work hard to preserve old storefronts because they give the street character and connect the present to the past.

The word can also refer to the entire ground-floor shop in a building, especially in a neighborhood with apartments above stores. Someone might say “there's a new restaurant in the storefront that used to be a hardware store,” meaning the whole street-level business space.