Lighting solutions
Smart systems are about much more than just being able to turn your lights on and off from anywhere – here’s how you could use this tech to your advantage
Lighting needs change over the course of a day, according to how a space is being used – but how many homes have you visited where it’s easy to make that happen? Nobody likes to be confronted by blankets of switches and dimmers, with labels clumsily stuck on to remind you what does what. Smart lighting takes all of that confusion away and more – giving you intelligent control that can respond to your needs, enhance your lifestyle and hook up with other tech in the house.
Design & infrastructure
“Planning is key to lighting design. We’re lucky that in most projects, we’re brought in early,” says Iain Shaw from Brilliant Lighting. “That said, sometimes people come to us at shows like Build It Live saying they spoke to us two years ago, and now the electricians are on site so they’re ready for us. That really doesn’t work, particularly if you want automation.”
The wiring for smart lighting is fundamentally different to standard cabling. In a conventional arrangement, there’s a direct connection between the switch and the fitting. “With automated setups, everything connects back to the central controller, including the cable from the wall plate – so the switch doesn’t talk directly to the light fitting,” says Iain.
A common mistake is to assume installing high-tech systems will axiomatically give you great results. “The magic of the scheme comes from the quality of the light itself, not the controls,” says Ian. “A swanky setup won’t make a rectangular grid of 16 white LED downlighters any more interesting, as switching modes will make little difference to the overall environment – it just gives you the ease of control.”
The trick? Make sure your technology integrator and lighting designer are speaking to each other in the early stages (well before you get on site) and consider using a company that has a proven track record of delivering both the design and the practical installation. And if you want to get it right, don’t rely on your architect. They may be great at designing buildings that make the most of natural brightness and views, but artificial illumination is a skill all in its own right.
“We start with what you want from your lighting and how the room will look according to different activities,” says Iain. “We then figure out the easiest and most flexible way to achieve it.” That doesn’t always mean using smart systems: you might not need a tech-based solution in your utility or cloakroom, for example, although you may still want to future-proof these zones. “Sometimes it might be cheaper to create scenes by installing more circuits of lower-current switched lighting,” says Andy Moss from Moss Technical. “Layered schemes work really well, but it’s easy to overdo things. I once dealt with a designer who planned 17 circuits for a small bathroom!”
So what can smart lighting do?
The most obvious places for this tech are zones that get used most – such as the kitchen, dining room and living areas. “In an open-plan area, you might need 15 to 20 switches to achieve layered lighting on a conventional circuit, and you end up hardly using them,” says Iain. Smart setups suit this kind of scheme, as it’s much easier to set moods – whether that be at the swipe of a tablet to select a different mood, or via preprogrammed scenes that respond to the time of day.
Automated lighting can enhance your lifestyle in a host of other ways. Imagine coming home with the groceries at 7pm in the middle of winter, for instance. Wouldn’t it be great if your house could sense you were pulling into the driveway, and switched on the porch, hall and kitchen lights? And what if it could alert you if you’ve forgotten to turn everything off when you leave (and allow you to sort it out remotely)?
On some systems you can adjust ramp-up times (how long it takes for the bulb to reach the desired intensity). “We always make sure there are some low-level lighting options in the bathroom,” says Iain. “For example, you might want a slower ramp-up of about three seconds to allow your eyes to adjust.”
These systems can also give you control of both the interior and exterior lighting, all-room functionality (so you can switch everything off when leaving from a single button) and clever options such as presence simulation for when you’re away.