LIGHTING CONTROL IS THE WAY TO GO!

Written by Custom Audio Video

o you have a row of six or more light switches or dimmers on any of your home’s walls? If so, wouldn’t it be great to have only one elegant keypad, providing instant access to all areas of your new home and landscape? These wonderful systems eliminate the tedious task of setting the home lighting just right for daily activities, bedtime, or special occasions. Remarkably, this option is now available for any home regardless of how old it is.

Leading lighting control manufacturers such as Lutron, the company that invented the electronic dimmer in 1961, have created lighting control systems that offer homeowners energy savings, increased security, added convenience, and improved aesthetics.

Homeowners can feel much safer knowing that each night as the sun sets, the landscape and security lighting will go into action. Plus, a built-in time clock will automatically adjust for changing seasons, as well as for daylight savings. Another nice security feature is the ability of a homeowner to turn every light in the home on with the push of one button from any room equipped with a keypad or touch panel.

If a homeowner goes on frequent vacations or has a second home, lighting control can really give a vacant house a lived-in appearance. It works by constantly monitoring and recording the state of all system devices in a home. When vacation mode is activated, the system plays back these events, providing a realistic appearance of activity while the home is unoccupied. The system can be programmed to record either the last days, the last weeks, or the last two weeks’ activities.

When most lights are off, one button can create a “path of light” to softly light the way to another room, allowing for late-night trips to the kitchen or bathroom without fumbling for switches in a dark hallway. Also, monitoring lighting in individual rooms or areas is a breeze requiring no more than a quick glance at a keypad’s discrete status LED lights.

Lighting control gives homeowners the power to enhance the beauty of their home and décor with an endless variety of customized room and whole-house lighting scenes. One button dims the lights for a soft romantic dinner while a different button lights the house for a festive party. The keypads can even be matched to a home’s paint colors, wallpaper, or décor, and some companies such as Lutron provide metal finishes and custom engraving with no extra charge for the engraving.

Power-failure memory is a feature that remembers where the lights were set prior to a power failure and returns them to their original settings when power is restored.

Conditional Logic is a feature that gives a system the ability to make lighting events conditional. For example, driveway sensors can be programmed to turn on exterior lighting if, and only if, it is dark. As another example, a single “Dining” button on a keypad might set different lighting based on the time of day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Remember, every lighting control system is unique, and the choice of manufacturers is critical. Some systems attempt to use a home’s existing high-voltage wires to control lights. These systems can be fussy and unreliable. There are some excellent wireless systems for owners of older homes who want to acquire some of the features that have been mentioned in this article. The most flexible and reliable systems use specialized wiring that is custom designed and installed by a licensed and professionally certified low-voltage contractor.