Lutron
Most people meet Lutron as a dimmer. In a large home, that is the least interesting thing the company makes. That is why our Ottawa showroom runs on Lutron HomeWorks rather than a brochure on a shelf. What matters is what happens when lighting, shading, keypads and automation are designed as a single system rather than a collection of separate products.
What HomeWorks actually is
HomeWorks is Lutron’s system for whole homes. It will run up to 10,000 zones in a home of up to 50,000 square feet, which is a technical way of saying you will not run out of it. It communicates over Clear Connect, Lutron’s own radio frequency — not your Wi-Fi. That sounds like a footnote until the internet drops and the lights carry on exactly as they did before.
Dimming is where the company started six decades ago, and it still shows. Ketra — Lutron’s tunable line, and the one running in our showroom — dims to 0.1% without flicker, an order of magnitude below the point where most LED gives up and starts to stutter. It is the difference between a room that goes dark and a room that goes quiet. You can stand in ours and watch it happen.
The keypad is the only part anyone touches
Every other component is buried in a ceiling or a closet. The keypad sits on the wall, at eye height, in the room the designer spent six months on. Lutron makes Palladiom, Alisse and Aviena in metal and glass, engraved rather than labelled, in finishes chosen to sit alongside the door hardware rather than argue with it. Set one against the six mismatched plastic switches it replaces and the argument makes itself.
The shades are Lutron too, and that is the point
Palladiom and Sivoia shades come from the same company as the dimming, which means they are not integrated with the lighting — they simply are the lighting. And the decision that actually matters is the cloth: a 1% openness weave, a 3% and a 5% let through very different amounts of light and keep very different amounts of the view.
Nobody has ever understood that from a sample card. We keep Lutron shades in a range of openness factors in the showroom so you can stand behind them, look out, and watch what each one does to the room. Then, because the shades and the lights are one system, the shading can track the sun and the lighting can rise to meet it, with nobody in the house deciding anything.
It already speaks to the rest of the house
Lutron publishes the brands it works with, and two of them are worth knowing about: Josh.ai for voice and Sonance for sound — control with no keypad on the wall at all, and speakers plastered invisibly into the drywall. Both are running alongside HomeWorks in our showroom, which is the only honest way to show that things work together.
See it before you choose it
Lighting control is the hardest thing in a house to buy from a brochure, because the product is an experience, and an experience does not photograph. So we built a room for it. In our Ottawa showroom you can watch a Ketra scene walk a whole day of colour temperature in a few minutes, take a room down to a tenth of one percent, and hold shade fabrics up against real daylight.
Come and stand in it. It takes an hour, and it will change what you ask for.
Some decisions cannot be made from a brochure
Our Ottawa showroom runs on HomeWorks. The Palladiom, Alisse and Sunnata keypads are on the wall and working, the Palladiom battery roller shades and Sivoia wired shades are hung, and the motorized drapery tracks run. Most people make up their minds within a few minutes of putting a hand on a keypad.
Most people meet Lutron as a dimmer. In a large home, that is the least interesting thing the company makes. That is why our Ottawa showroom runs on Lutron HomeWorks rather than a brochure on a shelf. What matters is what happens when lighting, shading, keypads and automation are designed as a single system rather than a collection of separate products.
What HomeWorks actually is
HomeWorks is Lutron’s system for whole homes. It will run up to 10,000 zones in a home of up to 50,000 square feet, which is a technical way of saying you will not run out of it. It communicates over Clear Connect, Lutron’s own radio frequency — not your Wi-Fi. That sounds like a footnote until the internet drops and the lights carry on exactly as they did before.
Dimming is where the company started six decades ago, and it still shows. Ketra — Lutron’s tunable line, and the one running in our showroom — dims to 0.1% without flicker, an order of magnitude below the point where most LED gives up and starts to stutter. It is the difference between a room that goes dark and a room that goes quiet. You can stand in ours and watch it happen.
The keypad is the only part anyone touches
Every other component is buried in a ceiling or a closet. The keypad sits on the wall, at eye height, in the room the designer spent six months on. Lutron makes Palladiom, Alisse and Aviena in metal and glass, engraved rather than labelled, in finishes chosen to sit alongside the door hardware rather than argue with it. Set one against the six mismatched plastic switches it replaces and the argument makes itself.
The shades are Lutron too, and that is the point
Palladiom and Sivoia shades come from the same company as the dimming, which means they are not integrated with the lighting — they simply are the lighting. And the decision that actually matters is the cloth: a 1% openness weave, a 3% and a 5% let through very different amounts of light and keep very different amounts of the view.
Nobody has ever understood that from a sample card. We keep Lutron shades in a range of openness factors in the showroom so you can stand behind them, look out, and watch what each one does to the room. Then, because the shades and the lights are one system, the shading can track the sun and the lighting can rise to meet it, with nobody in the house deciding anything.
It already speaks to the rest of the house
Lutron publishes the brands it works with, and two of them are worth knowing about: Josh.ai for voice and Sonance for sound — control with no keypad on the wall at all, and speakers plastered invisibly into the drywall. Both are running alongside HomeWorks in our showroom, which is the only honest way to show that things work together.
See it before you choose it
Lighting control is the hardest thing in a house to buy from a brochure, because the product is an experience, and an experience does not photograph. So we built a room for it. In our Ottawa showroom you can watch a Ketra scene walk a whole day of colour temperature in a few minutes, take a room down to a tenth of one percent, and hold shade fabrics up against real daylight.
Come and stand in it. It takes an hour, and it will change what you ask for.
Some decisions cannot be made from a brochure
Our Ottawa showroom runs on HomeWorks. The Palladiom, Alisse and Sunnata keypads are on the wall and working, the Palladiom battery roller shades and Sivoia wired shades are hung, and the motorized drapery tracks run. Most people make up their minds within a few minutes of putting a hand on a keypad.