Lighting control systems are becoming more and more common in the marketplace but they are far from new as large commercial buildings have been utilising the technology for decades under building automation systems.
What has changed is that there is a greater presence in the residential arena for these systems and they extend from the basic contractor switching methods to dimming systems with a greater focus on energy management.
Lighting in the home has had some significant changes too.
Once it was all about functional lighting for people to see what they are doing and provide a safe passage.
Now feature lighting is becoming more prominent and if you are serious about lighting when you are building your new home, the services of a lighting consultant are utilised to provide a lighting design that will deliver both functional and feature lighting throughout your home.
Sustainability is also playing a key role with the use of energy efficient fixtures as a mandatory requirement for all newly built homes.
A lighting control system provides the management of your lighting throughout your home and is designed to simplify the way you interact with it.
This is not always the case as there are a large number of people installing lighting control systems who do not understand the basic principles and defeat the very key purposes for installing such a system.
So what are the key benefits?

• Reduced energy consumption - This is achieved through dimming circuits.
  Conventional light switches provide full power to a lighting circuit when more often than not it is excessive and a waste of energy.
  A lighting control system can be configured to run your lights at 70% as a standard brightness over a typical 100%.
  By this we achieve 30% less power consumption and we extend our lamp life which means less lamp replacement costs.
  
• Reduced energy wastage - It is quite common for children or even adults to exit an area such as a bathroom and forget to turn the lighting or exhaust fans off.
  This could be left on for hours at a time but a lighting system can be configured to automatically turn off lights in designated areas after a predetermined time, helping forgetful people and saving you money in the long term.
  
• Dynamics - Conventional lighting circuits can't be changed.
  They are restricted to the switch that they are wired to and require a person to activate or deactivate from this switch.
  A lighting control system does not care for the location of a switch point or circuit, just as long as it is a part of the network, any switch can be instructed to control any individual or multiple circuits.
  This gives you the ability to turn all lights off at one point when exiting the home or perhaps turn on all exterior lights in the event of an emergency.
  
• Integration - Other systems that operate in your home such as smoke detectors or Alarm systems can be configured to integrate with your lighting control system.
  In the event that your alarm system is triggered, the lighting control system can be instructed to turn on all exterior lighting or provide egress lighting inside in the event of a smoke alarm.
  
• Low level automation - Not to be confused with a full automation system which is how some lighting control system manufacturers like to sell and brand their products but a good lighting control system will provide basic interfacing / control of ceiling fans, motorised curtains / blinds, zoned audio systems, RGB lighting systems and more.
  

There are different manufacturers of lighting control systems and the decision of which system to go with is a very important one as a lighting control system becomes an integral part of your home once implemented.
Design, hardware implementation, programming & support play key roles to delivering a trouble free solution.