4 Exciting New Trends in Home Lighting Control

Explore the Technology That Will Have the Biggest Impact in 2020

No technology in the world is older than lighting control, but that doesn’t mean it is not constantly evolving. Ever since humans created fire, they’ve been looking for new ways to illuminate their spaces and improve their lifestyles. Dimmers may have introduced the modern lighting control movement in the late 1950s, but innovation hasn't stopped there.

In the following decades, there's been the advent of color-changing bulbs, whole-home systems, and even intuitive mobile apps. Valuable additions were made in 2019 as well, whether it was brand new technology or existing one finally finding its way to residential applications in Newport, RI, Old Saybrook, CT and throughout New England. Explore our latest blog to learn about the latest and greatest in home lighting control, including tunable fixtures, voice control, and more.

 

SEE MORE: How You Can Benefit from Lighting Control Throughout the Day

Tunable Lighting

As we learn more about the way natural lighting affects our wellbeing, there have been great strides to ensure we access its benefits even when we’re indoors. New tunable lighting fixtures address this by changing their color temperature to mimic sunlight throughout the day.

Daylight typically transitions from cooler hues in the morning to warmer ones in the evening. You can recreate this experience indoors by adjusting your fixture ‘temperature’ in Kelvins. As you increase the Kelvins, you get ‘cooler’ blue hues while a lower Kelvin count produces warmer shades to help you relax.

Enjoy this technology to its full potential by integrating it with a lighting control system that automates these changes throughout the day. Relish in specific lighting scenes that evoke certain moods—concentration, relaxation, etc.—based on your fixtures’ color temperature.

Voice Control

Since Alexa hit the scene a few years ago, voice control has been the talk of the town in the smart home industry. No technology benefits more from this new control solution than your lighting. During a typical day, you probably interact with your lights at least a dozen times. How many of those times are your hands full or are you in the middle of doing something else?

Enhance your day-to-day with a lighting control system that lets you manage all your lights through simple voice commands. Do you want to turn off lights while watching a movie or turn them on when you first walk into the house? It is easy to adjust individual fixtures or make changes to the entire house instantly through dedicated scenes.

Wireless Lighting

Undertaking a professional lighting control installation used to mean a lot of extensive wiring throughout the house. Now companies like Lutron are offering a wide range of wireless lighting control solutions ideal for retrofit projects. Lutron’s main wireless options are the entry-level Caseta or whole-home Radio RA 2.

Each differs in the communication standards they use and the number of devices they can support. A Caseta solution uses your Wi-Fi connection to link devices meaning your central hub can only cover a limited area and number of devices. Lutron’s newest Radio RA2 solution uses RF radio signals allowing for up to 200 devices covering your entire home.

Lighting Design

Home lighting control is no longer only about functionality. Now you can expect the design to play a much more significant role as well. Fixture selection and layouts are becoming vital parts of the process. Light needs to be evenly spread out while highlighting the most critical points of a room, with diversified fixtures allowing for this type of depth in your design.

What you want is lighting that does its job every time without you even knowing it’s there. For your design, it's essential to consider lumens, fixture diameter and foot candles. Don't worry; we'll take care of all these technicalities which let us deliver optimal coverage with the fewest number of fixtures.

Do you want to embrace the latest home lighting control technology in your new construction or retrofit project? Our team will design a solution tailored to your space. Reach out to one of our lighting experts by calling (860) 875-2876 or filling out our contact form.