Smart Lighting Control

What good lighting control gives you

Layered light you can recall instantly: a bright, even setting for cooking; a warm low-level scene for the evening; a path of dim light at night. Instead of a bank of switches by the door, you get a small keypad with named scenes — or nothing visible at all, because the house already knows.

KNX or Lutron?

• KNX is an open, manufacturer-independent standard covering lighting, blinds, heating and more on one bus. It suits whole-house projects where you want everything integrated and you don't want to be locked to one vendor.
• Lutron is exceptional at the lighting and shading itself — particularly dimming quality across difficult loads, and beautifully made keypads. It integrates cleanly with other systems.

Plenty of projects use both. We specify around the building and how you live in it, not around a brand.

Getting dimming right

Most disappointing smart lighting comes down to dimming. LED lamps vary enormously in how they behave on a dimmer — flicker at low level, a sudden jump off the bottom of the range, buzzing, or a colour shift as they dim. It is a matter of matching driver type, dimming method and load. We test lamps against the intended dimmers rather than assuming, which is why our installations dim smoothly to a genuinely low level.

Retrofit and period properties

Wired control gives the best result, but full rewiring isn't always practical in an occupied or listed property. Wireless and hybrid systems — keeping existing cabling and adding control at the fitting or circuit — can deliver most of the benefit with a fraction of the disruption. We survey and give you honest options with the trade-offs spelled out.