The ultimate lighting for Home-Resorts

(25/11/2008)

Encompassing clusters of main buildings, landscaped grounds featuring pools and waterfalls, with infinity pools and spas, terraces with spectacular views, luxurious indoor and outdoor entertainment areas, home cinemas and AV rooms, custom kitchens, and master-suite bedrooms and bathrooms, home-resorts are becoming a symbol of achievement.

The modern home-resort – enabled by the wonders of modern technology, driven by the forces of wealth and the desire for luxury in seclusion – is a different development.

Owners of home-resorts include wealthy singles, families and even corporations. The focus may be on lavish entertaining, with palatial entertainment rooms for parties and business or family gatherings, or family nesting with plentiful children and teen activities to encourage them to entertain friends at home.

Luxurious bedrooms and baths for owners and guests, entertainment choices including home cinema, exercise gym, spa, swimming pool and tennis courts – as well as a complete home-office with computers, office equipment and global communications 24/7 – are all standard in a home-resort.

Exotic gardens and outside entertainment areas – terraces, grottoes, walks & paths, swimming pools and ponds – are typical settings for home-resorts, with interior and exterior spaces flowing together in places.

Home-resorts usually rely on automation to control the numerous systems required to support and service a property of this size and complexity, with intelligent lighting controls in the vanguard of specified systems. And as with all home-automation, convenient and intuitive ease of operation is important for owners and their guests.

Home-resorts by definition have numerous rooms and levels with many entrances and outdoor areas. With homes of this nature, and many owners too busy to supervise the final lighting layout during design and construction, it is often impossible to ascertain just how a room will be used until it is occupied.

Flexible software-based lighting control systems with multi-point/multi-channel switching – and the ability to operate with all types of standard and specialized lamps – allow lighting ‘scenes’ and operations to be finalized at commissioning stage, and easily reprogrammed at any time thereafter to suit a customer’s wishes.

And of course, system failure would be unthinkable in such a property, so 24-hour/365-day operational reliability, elimination of single-point-of-failure, ease of maintenance and superb product support are of overriding importance for any lighting control system installed.

The recommended solution for lighting luxury home-resorts is installation of stand-alone complete-building switching and/or dimming systems to control lights in the major buildings in the cluster, networked together with a centralized monitoring and control system. With stand-alone systems provided for each unit, single-point-of-failure vulnerability is minimized.

This effectively creates a whole-home system for controlling lights in all main buildings, augmented by stand-alone or networked dimmers in guest bungalows, gardens and elsewhere. Exterior, security and landscape lighting are best installed as stand-alone scene dimming and/or switching systems networked to a centralized master controller.

Room by room - lighting control systems provide convenience and simplicity of operation by replacing conventional fixed wired layouts with a flexible software based system adaptable to the owner’s current & future requirements.
A basic switch layout concept for home-resorts could include:
- a master panel by the front entrance for owners to select ‘welcome’ scenes or turn on security lights
- a centralized switchpanel in a hallway opposite the main Living Hall
- a switchpanel inside the Living Hall with remote control option and temporary settings for entertaining
- a dual-zone switchpanel in the kitchen area to control inside & outside area lighting
- an (optional) master switchpanel in Master Bedroom so lights can be dimmed or turned off from one location before going to bed, leaving pre-programmed lights on as required.

Larger home-resorts can expand on these concepts with additional switchpanels located throughout the property and linked to the control system, and/or with a central PC or touch-screen controller programmed for whole-property coverage.

A multipurpose living hall – frequently opening out to incorporate an exterior terrace, swimming pool or gardens – is usually the core of a home-resort. Intelligent lighting controls for this focal area must feature true ‘scene’ dimming, as against simple ON/OFF or manual faders.

A Futronix PFX System is the recommended solution for such a large and complex space, networked with the other dimming and switching racks installed throughout the property to allow centralized control.

Lighting for the family room could be controlled by a PFX scene dimmer, networked as part of a whole-house lighting control system, with local switchplates for selecting room lighting scenes.

Depending on location, lighting controls for dining areas may be part of a larger scene dimming system such as installed PFX systems, or stand-alone dimmers in exterior locations.

Master bedrooms for home-resorts will normally comprise a suite of rooms, including one or more bedrooms, his-&-hers bathrooms and WCs, walk-in closets and dressing rooms, and often a private study or lounge. Again, a networked stand-alone PFX System dimmer is perfect for this application, although another option is installation of smaller stand-alone Hx or P-Series dimmers. Other bedrooms – such as guest or children’s bedrooms – can also be linked into Futronix whole-house systems, providing night-lighting, morning wake-up lighting, and other features. Alternatively, smaller stand-alone P-Series or Hx dimmer units can provide similar features.

Ideal lighting controllers for guest bungalows include the Hx remotely-mounted wireless dimmer, or P-Series stand-alone dimmers. These can be completely stand-alone units, or can be networked to a central control location for master switching, while still providing total individual control over bungalow lighting.

A master-suite bathroom should be a place of retreat and relaxation for a busy owner. Dimmed lights are beneficial for a relaxing bath – and for peace of mind in a wet area, the ideal lighting control is an extra low voltage switchplate linked into a whole-house system based on a PFX System. Lighting in other bathrooms throughout the main and outlying buildings in a home-resort can also be programmed into a Futronix-based whole-house lighting control system to provide similar features for all occupants.

Home theaters - home-resorts will usually feature a dedicated home-theater – frequently a miniaturized version of a commercial cinema with curtains, tiered theater seating, wall sconce lighting and soffited overheads with concealed fluorescent lighting. Multi-scene lighting is usual, programmed for pre-show and after-show fade-in/fade-out transitions combined with music, all controlled by Futronix systems with integrated control from a single universal remote handset.

Lighting for kitchens can be programmed as part of a central multi-room dimmer system, or with a stand-alone scene dimmer covering just the kitchen and perhaps an adjacent snack bar area. Lighting will typically feature fluorescent lighting under countertops, with halogen or low voltage lighting over kitchen or dining table area.

Related categories:  Lighting system   Residential