Kasper Connections

How Does Lighting Control Enhance Your Life?

Do you have a place in your house where you would like to have fully dimmable two way lights, how about being able to dim them or turn them on or off from a third location?  This is something you can do with lighting control. In fact it’s just the beginning of what you can do with lighting control.   

What is Lighting control?  I’m glad you asked, you are most likely accustomed to turning on a light switch when you walk in a room.  Your experience has taught you that when you flip that switch the light turns on.   You are also familiar with two way lights.  In this scenario there are two switches that can both control the lights.  A typical example would be at the top and bottom of stairs.   In this example the two switches are tied in together, flipping either switch would allow you to turn the light on and off. In this case either switch controls the lights. 

Usually the term lighting control is referring to lights that are found in a home automation system.   In this case lights can be controlled by many types of activities. The easiest to understand is a wall plate with buttons.  In this case you would press one of the six buttons and a light could turn on and off.  Pressing another button on the same wall plate could turn a different light on and off.   This probably reminds you of the two way light switches by your stairs. Yes, you are right. In this case we are using lighting control to mimic a two way lighting scenario, but in this scenario it is not electricity being turned on and off that controls the light. It is a radio frequency being sent back and forth between the six button wall plate and the light switch that the light is on.   It seems the same but the difference allows lighting control to give you the ability to control lighting scenes.  If you have a good home automation integrator they will most likely help you program lighting scenes.  This is one of the real benefits of lighting control.  In lighting scenes pressing one button can control many various lights from the press of one button. 

One of the first places people use lighting scenes is in their kitchen/dining room.  This is because we typically have 2 rooms that are open to each other but used for many different tasks.  What do you usually do in these two rooms, cook / clean, eat dinner, entertain, perhaps study or read at your table?  Most people have 6-8 light switches between these two rooms.  In the Kitchen you may have overhead lights, pendant lights, a sink light, under- cabinet lights, and over-cabinet lights.  Then in the Dining room you may have a chandelier and wall sconces.    Let’s say it was time to cook.  You’d probably want bright lights in the Kitchen and maybe ambient light in the dining room for setting the table.  So let’s say you want the under cabinet lights and sink light and the main overheads on full bright.  When it is time for Dinner you want only the chandelier light brighter with the kitchen lights set to an accent level. 

When was the last time you ran around your kitchen and dining room and actually set the dimmers on each light for the two tasks?   What most people normally do is either turn all the lights on or don’t use their accent lighting.   Creating lighting scenes that are controlled with the touch of a button will make it easy to have the lighting you need when you want it, and it will become something you use every day.   Instead of running around the room turning on and off light switches you will simply be able to change lighting scenes with the touch of a button.  This not only accents the beauty of your home, it saves you energy by only using the lights you really need.    So you can see the benefit to using lighting control.