The A(B)CDE of Lighting for Your New Home
One of the most overlooked areas of a new home is lighting. This may seem strange given that every plan for every new home has lots of lighting in it. However, the truth is that most of those plans cover the power needed for basic architectural lighting in every room or, as our team often says, "you are covered for four cans and a fan."
We use the word 'basic' because these architectural lighting plans are just one of 4 areas you should focus on when building your new home. We call it the A(B)CDE of lighting. Why is the B in brackets? More on that later.
A is for Architectural
Your basic 'cans' are the simplest form of architectural lighting you can use. Your architect or electrician has probably already specified an economical and straightforward solution and looking through the ACDE of lighting might change what you want for your architectural lighting.
The other question we ask is whether we want more human-centric lighting. This human-centric approach allows us to tune the color of your light to the sunrise and sunset. This technology also allows us to implement something like 'dim to warm' (rather than dim to grey) and tuning your lights to accentuate your artwork and furniture.
C is for Control
Our customers say they could not live without lighting control of all the parts of home automation we have installed. Lighting control does many things in your home, like creating scenes and automation, but that may not be the most significant benefit.
For many of our clients, lighting control allows you to replace the large gang of switches the electrician with a single controller that does the same thing and more. So not only does it clean up your wall-acne, but it also means you never have to have the conversation that starts, "what does this switch do?"
Lighting control also needs to be integrated into your whole-home automation platform for ease of management across your whole home.
D is for Decorative
After considering architecture and control, you should consider what decorative lights you want. These should cover wall sconces, chandeliers, mirror lights, and no end of other solutions. This sequence's importance is to ensure that if you make decisions on the type of architecture and control systems you want, you can make sure your decorative lights fit.
Additionally, it would help if you considered decorative lighting part of your whole lighting budget and not another budget entirely. Many customers spend tens of thousands of dollars on decorative lighting when similar or better effects could be achieved by combining the budget with architecture and control plans.
E is for Environmental or Exterior
Landscaping is another budget heading that does not always connect to the integrated lighting plan. While your outside dreams may come to life later, it is helpful to consider how your control and automation platforms will be integrated into your external lighting plans.
What about the B?
Now that we understand the ACDE of lighting, we need to ask what the B stands for? For us, the B stands for BRAVAS.
At BRAVAS, we will work with you, your architect, designer, builder, electrician, and landscaper to make sure your lighting plans come together. We can do much more than install the technology, and if you have plans, we can help design the proper lighting and lighting loads for your home. We have access to lighting specialists and designers to help you model what technologies might make the most sense for the effect you are trying to achieve.
Contact us today. We would love to show you how to make your lighting dreams a reality.
