ᐅ Lighting Design in the Kitchen, Living and Dining Areas + Smart Home Technology
Created on: 18 Feb 2024 17:03
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Fliederhaus25
Hello everyone,
we are currently working on the lighting design and smart home setup for our single-family house.
Lighting Design
We have a large kitchen, living, and dining area that should be illuminated according to its different uses.
The first step involves planning spotlights to be installed in the thin concrete ceiling.
The main planning comes from our lighting designer, but we would also like to get some feedback from the forum.
The lights should not all be on at the same time but controlled in several switching groups – turned on, off, or dimmed depending on the usage.
In the attached document, the planned spotlights are marked with red circles, the wiring is shown with green lines and boxes numbered, and the switches are indicated by red boxes with numbers.
The stair lighting is not yet planned; according to our lighting designer, this will be planned and decided during the shell construction phase.
What do you think about the plan? Does it fit the floor plan? Are there perhaps too many spotlights? Where could floor and table lamps be placed?
Smart Home
To operate the lights as flexibly as possible, we want to wire them in a star topology using 5-core cables and equip them with Casambi (DALI) modules. This allows us to control the lights even where there are no switches, program scenes, and dim more precisely than with a phase-cut dimmer.
Neither my husband nor I are enthusiastic DIY or programming fans, so we believe this solution provides the flexibility of a smart home system without including functions we would not use in the end.
Thanks to the 5-core star wiring, we can also add more lights to the system later by installing additional Casambi modules.
The exterior blinds (raffstores) will be connected via KNX and can be operated from central switches.
What do you think of this planned approach? Should we also connect the DALI/Casambi lights to the KNX system? From what I understand, that would require additional central wiring.
Thank you and best regards!
we are currently working on the lighting design and smart home setup for our single-family house.
Lighting Design
We have a large kitchen, living, and dining area that should be illuminated according to its different uses.
The first step involves planning spotlights to be installed in the thin concrete ceiling.
The main planning comes from our lighting designer, but we would also like to get some feedback from the forum.
The lights should not all be on at the same time but controlled in several switching groups – turned on, off, or dimmed depending on the usage.
In the attached document, the planned spotlights are marked with red circles, the wiring is shown with green lines and boxes numbered, and the switches are indicated by red boxes with numbers.
The stair lighting is not yet planned; according to our lighting designer, this will be planned and decided during the shell construction phase.
What do you think about the plan? Does it fit the floor plan? Are there perhaps too many spotlights? Where could floor and table lamps be placed?
Smart Home
To operate the lights as flexibly as possible, we want to wire them in a star topology using 5-core cables and equip them with Casambi (DALI) modules. This allows us to control the lights even where there are no switches, program scenes, and dim more precisely than with a phase-cut dimmer.
Neither my husband nor I are enthusiastic DIY or programming fans, so we believe this solution provides the flexibility of a smart home system without including functions we would not use in the end.
Thanks to the 5-core star wiring, we can also add more lights to the system later by installing additional Casambi modules.
The exterior blinds (raffstores) will be connected via KNX and can be operated from central switches.
What do you think of this planned approach? Should we also connect the DALI/Casambi lights to the KNX system? From what I understand, that would require additional central wiring.
Thank you and best regards!
Numrollen schrieb:
Is DALI simply a must here, or can I still use a KNX dimmer? If we stick to constant voltage (CV) light sources, the question of DALI or KNX dimmer basically comes down to a cost calculation. Beyond a certain number of dimmed circuits, DALI becomes simply more cost-effective, especially with RGBWW and similar setups even earlier. If we’re talking about standard light sources and not native DALI fixtures, the dimming behavior of DALI is not different from a good KNX dimmer (such as Theben or the new MDT LED controllers). If you want to work a lot with constant current (CC) sources, decentralized LED drivers (control gear) are almost unavoidable, and that’s where DALI really shows its strengths.
Another factor to consider is the number of groups of drivers when working in a decentralized setup, which mostly applies to CC light sources (something I see in practice with lighting designers more often).
In your plan, you have multiple power supplies feeding your circuits, which is possible with CC LED strips using several DALI drivers that can be combined into a single lighting circuit with just two clicks. With central dimming, you get large power supply packages, repeaters, etc., that all generate heat and require a lot of space in the distribution board.
Fliederhaus25 schrieb:
What do you think about the planning? Does it fit the floor plan? Are there perhaps too many spotlights? Where could floor and table lamps be placed?
I think the number of spotlights is appropriate. I might suggest adding two spotlights along the walking paths in the master bathroom’s wet area. I also noticed that no LED strip lights seem to be planned. I find a combination of spotlights and strips quite appealing, as strips can provide indirect, glare-free ambient lighting for basic illumination and create subtle room accents. PS: nice room layout!
Numrollen schrieb:
Is DALI really a must here, or can I still use a KNX dimmer for this? I can share an older example: since 2016, 24V LED strips (warm white, no RGB) combined with central Meanwell HLG power supplies and eldoLED lineardrive drivers have been lighting an attic floor. The ceiling is drywall. Of course, there are also some regular lighting outlets.
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Numrollen26 Feb 2024 16:24Thank you, great idea. Do you still remember which profiles / aluminum channels you used? Are the LED strips rotated 90°, or do they shine straight down?