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Over the past ten years we have added more and more lighting to our homes. One room may incorporate a chandelier, sconces, multiple recessed cans, art spots, cove lighting, lamps... you get the idea. People spend a lot of design time and money getting the lighting just right in their homes. Then they control them with twenty switches! Improve Aesthetics Lighting control gets rid of all the bulky banks of light switches on the wall. In their place is a clean, easy to control keypad. Now, the focus is on the art hanging on your wall and not the mass of light switches. Decorating with Light One of our favorite things about lighting control is how it shows off your home. Elaborate lighting schemes are designed to highlight the architectural and interior design elements of your home. By dimming these lights to varying degrees, you create scenes and moods that beautify your home. With regular switches, you would have to walk into a room and turn on multiple switches, adjusting dim levels as you go. Since some lights will be controlled from switches across the room, you will have to repeat the process to get everything on where you like it. An adjoining room, hallway, or gallery will be turned on by switches elsewhere and so you'll journey to other banks of wall switches to add these lights to the scene. With lighting control, a scene can be instantly called up with the press of a button. Any combination of lights you want in or outside the house at any combination of dim levels you can imagine. Quick, easy, and reliable. Increase Security Without lighting control, your alarm goes off and nobody notices- including the burglars. They expect it and they are skilled at getting in and out quickly. Throw 'em for a loop with lighting control. Now, when the alarm goes off, your house automatically lights up like a Christmas tree! We can even make the lights flash! Burglars like the dark and the element of surprise. They'll be the ones getting the surprise and attention will be immediately drawn to your house. When someone is left home alone, lighting control makes for great peace of mind. A keypad is usually located on either side of the bed. When you hear that strange bump in the night, a single button will turn on every light in the house 100%. In addition, when you're out of town, a vacation mode will play back lighting scenes. This turns rooms on and off in a random pattern that will fool any burglar scoping out your house. We all know that lamp on a timer in the living room isn't fooling anyone. So, how does it work? Since each of your lighting fixtures are run directly back to the panel location, a processor can control the loads going to every fixture from a central point in the house. Keypads connected to the processor allow simple control of every light on the system in any configuration you desire. You can change the scenes and configurations anytime you want because the wiring scheme never dictates how you control your lighting as it does in a regular lighting plan. Here again, we have heard enough horror stories of nightmare lighting systems to know that experience and expertise are the key to a successful install. Done properly, it can be the best money you spend in your new home. That's the only way we do it at AVA. Can I put lighting control in an existing home? Absolutely. Lutron and Crestron both make switches that replace your existing light switches to provide control from keypads, scenes, alarm inegration, and more. These products do not require extra wiring as they communicate to the central processor using radio frequency (RF) transmission.
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