Beach-house entertainment and lighting control
A stunning example of lighting control
Quite often after we complete an installation it’s difficult to look back and see where all the hard work went. That’s certainly the case with this beautiful property belonging to one of our valued Christchurch customers. Some challenging angles throughout the home and the need to keep components hidden from view meant a lot of lateral thinking from both the design and installation teams. The end result speaks for itself though, with a home that the owners love and a completed project that the Soundline team are justifiably proud of.
The original brief for this project was for a high quality home cinema and sound system, but soon grew in scope as they realised all the benefits on offer from an integrated lighting control system.
Exterior and interior lights are all controlled by the Lutron system.
Home theatre
The focal point of this room is without doubt the large TV panel. The size and layout of the room meant that a projector wasn’t an option and this large panel does a fantastic job.
However, modern TV’s only provide passable sound so a decent upgrade was most definitely needed. This installation uses the Cinergy speaker system from Monitor Audio, placed behind acoustically transparent panels to maintain a clean look that the clients had specified. Normally a fairly easy task, but in this case the Soundline team were required to go above and beyond, reshaping the panels to fit perfectly with the sloping roofline, resulting in a great looking room that is fully functional in providing outstanding sound quality. The acoustic performance of this room is now excepetional, as it needs to be when the Cinergy speakers are turned up a few notches.
Custom panels were built to match the sloping roofline.
Blind and lighting control
This home now sports lighting control through a full Lutron system. This means the owners can enjoy benefits like scheduling. This can be for practical purposes such as kitchen lighting in the morning, or to control ambience through things like pool or accent lighting.
There is also a great security feature that makes the house appear lived in by turning lights off and on, even when no-one is home. Smart locks and doorbells can also be integrated into this system if required.
Accent lighting automatically turns on at dusk
Lighting ‘scenes’ are another great benefit of a Lutron system. These are preset combinations of lights that can greatly enhance the overall mood or ‘feel’ of a home. For example, a ‘movie’ scene might turn off the kitchen lights and set the lounge lights to 10%. Or the ‘lights out’ scene might turn off all of the house lights but leave on an outside or driveway light. The combinations are only limited by your imagination and are a great way to adapt your home to your living style.
Lutron provides a range of control options as well. Wall mounted switches can provide instant access to lighting scenes, as can small pedestals that can be mounted almost anywhere. Your smartphone or tablet can also easily control your lighting scenes.
Keypads can control both blinds and lights. Blinds can be automated in a similar way to lighting. They can be set to raise or lower at particular times. This could be in response to the time of day, to enhance privacy and security or perhaps to provide automatic sun protection for furniture or artworks.
As well as being automated, blinds can be raised or lowered from a wall mounted keypad, in conjunction with lighting control. In the image below, we can see an example of this, with blind control on the left and lighting scenes on the right.
There are plenty of material and colour options that make it easy find blinds that will match your home. There are also a number of mounting option that give you complete flexibility on where you install them. In this installation, we recessed the blind into the ceiling for a more discreet look.
Control of both lighting and blinds is simple, elegant and will significantly enhance your quality of life and the enjoyment of your home.
There are many colour and mounting options for Lutron blinds
The Soundline team has decades of experience in bringing homes to life with entertainment and automation systems. We'd love to hear your ideas and can even share a few of our own. Give us a call and share your plans with us so we can help turn your house into a dream home.
