Lighting Design & Control

Our Expertise

Transform the look and feel of any space, inside and out, at the touch of a button.

About Lighting Design & Control

At Grahams, we have been supplying and installing whole-home smart lighting control systems for over 20 years. More recently we are now involved in specifying not just the controls but the light sources, fitting and drivers too. All our current lighting designs take full advantage of the extensive choices available in LED technology to provide smooth, flicker-free dimming and control.

By having design input from the on-wall control, dimmer technology, LED driver and the LED light source we can guarantee superb results and ensure smooth and flicker-free lighting. By knowing how all these devices work together, we can then guarantee the result. 

Do your LEDs flicker? – Find out Here!

If you are interested in finding out more about Graham's lighting design services, please call us and arrange a time to explore this further.

Each light in a home can be controlled from any keypad, providing instant access to all areas of the home and landscape. This eliminates the tedious task of setting the home lighting just right for daily activities, bedtime, or special occasions. There are now free apps for your mobile phones and tablets which allow you to change and store preset levels, as well as changing which buttons control which lights on each keypad.

Keypads can have a button to create a 'path of light' to softly light the way to another room, allowing for late-night trips to the bathroom or kitchen without fumbling for switches in a dark hallway. This also means monitoring lighting in individual rooms or areas throughout your home, requires no more than a glance at a keypad's discrete status LEDs.

Keypads come in a wide variety of styles and finishes. In some rooms where you might want a more traditional switch, we can even use simple push buttons, which can be programmed in the same way. Once we have agreed with you on the functionality, the buttons are laser engraved and backlit to show the function of each button. 

Whether you are looking to reduce energy costs, alter the look and feel of your home or increase security when you’re not at home, using a lighting control system has many advantages over 19th century light switches.

  • Setting different 'scenes' of lighting at the touch of a single button. This provides a luxury feel to a room which is very difficult to achieve using 3 or 4 'rotary' dimmers.
  • Dim lights and areas from more than one location.
  • Prolonging lamp life by running the lamps more efficiently. This applies to LEDs too because they last longer when running them at lower thermal temperatures.
  • Easier to install than regular multi-way light switching.
  • Allowing grouping of areas for whole-house control.
  • Seamless integrating with blinds, curtains and shutters.
  • Integration with touch screen systems, mobiles, tablets, voice control etc.
  • Integration with security systems.
  • Advanced timer functions to allow different on and off settings whilst you are away.
  • Web interfaces that allow for remote access and control. as well as remote support from Grahams.
  • Time clocks that operate at sunset and sunrise, changing automatically throughout the year.
  • Integration with smoke detectors to turn on lights in the event of smoke detection.

For over 20 years Grahams have been using Lutron Homeworks as our preferred lighting control solution. On our larger whole-house projects, Lutron Homeworks QS now supports not only hard-wired solutions (perfect for new buildings or refurbishments) but also a superb range of wireless options which solve problems on existing homes where re-wiring is not possible. We also have wired and wireless solutions for single rooms which fully integrate with the latest voice control, mobile and tablet devices.

Grahams are one of Lutron's first residential elite dealers in the UK. Our Custom Installation team are fully trained in system design and programming allowing us to offer first-class support and services to our client base.

Our service may include some or all of the following services.

  • Producing control system schematics – showing locations of keypad, control and operation.
  • Full lighting layouts with dimensional setout.
  • A full specification of fittings, LED source, drivers.
  • Wiring schematics for the wiring of the complete system to help the electrical contractors.
  • Contractor’s specification documentation to spell out and make it very clear and transparent as to who is going to do what part of the physical work. For example, we may ask your electrical contractor to “first-fix” (run) the cables for the low voltage keypads, but Grahams would then terminate, test and commission the keypads as part of our work.

Electrical Services

 In most cases, your electrical contractor will be carrying out the main 230v wiring and installation of fittings. However, for a one-stop shop, we have our team of reliable and experienced electrical contractors, and it may be sensible for Grahams to arrange to do all the electrical installation work as part of our package. Bringing this under our control can often save time and also improve the reliability and guarantees the result delivers what you expect, and is what we designed.

Grahams Lighting Design Services

Today most of the lighting used in the home is likely to be using LED. LED technology has virtually replaced traditional incandescent light sources that have been with us for the past 10 – 15 years. In most cases, LEDs are considerably more energy-efficient than the light source they replaced and now provide huge benefits in energy saving, light output, colour temperature and effect.

Until a few years ago about 90% of LEDs on the market were quite frankly not very good. Many of the mass market solutions were cheap and consequently of low quality, providing low output and undesirable colour temperature, which made quality finishes look anaemic. The remaining 10% was pretty good, but you needed to find specialist manufacturers or distributors as most electrical wholesalers did not stock these more specialist products.

If you have regular light switches without dimming control, the problem of poor-quality LEDs is reduced significantly, but as soon as you add a dimmer your problems can start. So, you will either need a good understanding of the technical issues or work with someone (like Grahams) that does.

Grahams have embraced these issues and now our service includes a full lighting design and specification offers. We understand what makes a beautifully lit home. We can show you what the effects are of carefully selecting fittings that are perfectly matched to the usage, and most importantly if we are in charge of the selection and supply of the components from start to finish, we can guarantee the end result.

We will work as part of the project design team, working closely with you, your architect and/or interior designers to help ensure that each light fitting meets the required aesthetic, lighting output, performance and can be properly controlled and dimmed smoothly and reliably.

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