27 Apr A guide to garden lighting – Controlling your lighting

A guide to garden lighting – Controlling your lighting.

This is my guide to garden lighting. Click here to see the introduction to my guide. Click here to view the Which light fitting stage of this guide.

By using the right product, controlling your lighting can be a very simple, easy and flexible process. We use a system by Light Symphony. They have a variety of different ways to control your garden lighting. The options we have used in the past are:

Remote controls

Remote controls are the most simple way of controlling your lighting. There is a small remote for smaller lighting schemes and a large one for setting up and controlling a more complex system with perhaps movement sensors or colour changing lights.

To operate the remote control you simply program which lighting circuit you want to operate with which number and then its a simple push for on and then push for off. Pushing number 3 turns the driveway lighting on and off for example.

Picture touch panel

This to me is genius! This is a touchscreen photo frame but with a difference. You can add any photo, design or maybe even a Google Earth screenshot into the frame and then you can program the frame to control the lights in anyway that you want. So if you want, you can program the frame so that when you press the illustration of the tree the lights in the garden with uplight the tress come on or press the drawing of the patio and the surrounding lights are turned on. Its that simple! If you decide you want to change the picture within the frame then all you do is clear the memory, add a new picture and reprogram.

Smartphone control

A device is plugged into the back of your home router and then a free app is downloaded onto your smartphone. As long as you have a wireless signal you can use the app to turn your lighting on and off, dim the lighting and (if you have them) change the colour of your lights. This is a really simple, cost effective and very hi-tech way of controlling your lighting.

Security controls

This covers a variety of different controllers which includes:

PIR (motion sensors).

Timers.

Driveway beam sensors.

Interaction with existing electric gates.

Any one or a combination of the above can be integrated into our lighting schemes and will not only make your lighting easier to control but will add extra security to your home.