My eleven year old son seems to be developing a well known skill that a lot of his age group have. That is the inability to turn off lights when he leaves a room, particularly his bedroom. I often find myself spotting that his light is on when I pass his room; upon inspection the room is brightly lit but he is nowhere to be seen. He has the lights on in another room!

My own home benefits from having a smart lighting system which gives us great dimming control of the lighting brightness, the ability to voice control lights and schedule when they turn on or off but without the use of sensors the lights can still be left on accidentally.

We’ve now added motion sensors to monitor a handful of rooms in the house. These smart sensors pair up with the smart lighting dimmers installed and check if the room is vacant or occupied. Let me run through some simple examples.

In my son’s room the sensor is only checking to see if the room is empty or vacant. He still turns the light on from the switch but if no movement is detected for more than 15 minutes then the lights will turn off.

In our Utility Room we often find that we enter the room with our hands full with laundry, shopping or dirty hands coming in from the garden. The sensor installed in the Utility Room senses you entering the room, turns the light on to a specific brightness and then after 5 minutes, if no motion is detected, it will turn off the lights. Walk in, walk out mindset in this room. We’ve also got this functioning in the bathrooms and hallways in the house.

One smart feature of the sensors is that I can select when the sensor is active. For example in the hallways, these sensors are only active at night, sunset to sunrise. In other rooms the sensors are active all day and in bedrooms I have the sensors active up until 10pm, to not disrupt sleeping hours.

Sensors offer greater flexibility and control of your home’s lighting. An advanced set up like this is what we do at Customised for our customers with lighting control systems. Our recommended system for any customer wanting smarter lighting in their home is Lutron RA2 Select. This reliable, scalable and easy to live with lighting system is suitable for any home whether it’s a new construction or fitting into an existing home.

Customised are your local Lutron Pro installers in East Anglia and welcome your questions and enquiries.