By mid-afternoon, shoppers' cars at the Canberra Outlet Centre were parked along Canberra Avenue to Tom Price Street, with traffic also at a crawl on Iron Knob street.

Carparking was also hard to secure at the Canberra Centre, but that didn't put bargain hunters off.

Anne and Phoebe Stewart and Jessica Solomon braved the crowds on Wednesday morning to line up at the Lush cosmetics shop in the Canberra Centre, waiting half an hour before the doors opened to snap up bargains.

"Worth every minute," Ms Solomon said.

Anne Stewart, whose small car was better suited to the carpark traffic in the city, said she didn't come in with a list of things she wanted to buy.

"I just wanted to see what was a really good buy," she said.

Lush Canberra store manager Shakya Weerakkody said there was a handful of people lined up at the shop at 6.30am.

"The line kind of built up and got really intense at about 8am today," she said.

Gift packs marked down after Christmas proved popular with shoppers and the shop would be "pretty decimated" by the end of the day, Ms Weerakkody said.

Retailers agreed that the experience of shopping still lured customers into the shops and away from online-only retailers.

The senior marketing manager at the Canberra Centre, Kelly McGufficke, said the Boxing Day sales were a tradition.

"People really enjoy that shopping experience of coming inside the centre, it’s a tradition whereby retailers are still providing enormous sales on this particular day so customers really hold out for it," she said.

"There have been a huge amount of crowds coming in since early this morning, so we're very happy with the result."

Ms McGufficke said the centre ensured additional security and cleaning staff accommodated the needs of customers.

Grant Knight, the Harvey Norman audio and computer franchisee at Fyshwick, said trade was at least as good as Boxing Day last year, and would possibly be better.

Mr Knight said Canberrans were shopping for big ticket items after Christmas and chose to shop in person because they preferred to "see, touch and feel".

"Leading up to Christmas it's emergency purchases and small gifts," he said. "Boxing Day onwards, it's stuff for the family. New fridges, new lounges, new TVs."

Among the first things sold on Wednesday morning was a portable airconditioning unit and a fan, Mr Knight said.

General executive manager of stores and experiences at Myer, Tony Sutton, said Boxing Day was the department store chain's busiest trading day of the year and plenty of shoppers were redeeming gift cards they had received the day before.

"Across the day we expect to see 2 million customers come through our doors," he said.

Cosmetics, lady's shoes and lady's dresses were the three biggest selling areas for Myer in this year's sales, Mr Sutton said.

"Today everyone was actually quite excited. [The staff] love the atmosphere, they enjoy it. They have a bit of fun with it," he said.

Westfield Belconnen centre manager Chad Daly said the centre was likely to reach its usual Boxing Day target.

"It's quite pumping at the moment," he said on Wednesday afternoon.

Retail trade in the ACT will reach $334 million between Boxing Day and January 15, up 3.4 per cent from last year's post-Christmas period, the Australian Retailers Association predicts.