Home Lighting Control Systems — Lutron & Crestron Specialists Since 1998

The Single Highest-Impact System in Any Luxury Home — Designed, Installed and Programmed by Custom Controls

Lighting control is the service we recommend first on every new build and major renovation — and the one we would install before anything else if a client’s budget allowed only one system. Nothing else changes how a home feels, looks and functions as immediately, or saves as much energy as unobtrusively. A properly specified system brings every light, blind and curtain in a property under one coherent interface: a single button recalls the exact lighting a room needs for any activity, lighting follows the natural rhythm of the day automatically, and a home that’s away on holiday can convincingly look occupied every evening it isn’t. We are certified Lutron dealers and Crestron Dealers of Distinction. We have been designing, installing and programming lighting control systems since 1998 across London, Cheshire, Surrey, Dubai and the French Alps.

What a Lighting Control System Actually Replaces

A conventional home has a switch for every light, and that switch only does one thing: on or off, sometimes with a basic rotary dimmer. A lighting control system replaces every one of those switches with a single keypad — but the keypad itself isn’t the point. The point is what one button press can now do: recall a precise, pre-set level for every light in the room simultaneously, in the exact combination that took a designer’s time to get right once, recallable forever after without anyone needing to touch a second switch. “Reading” dims the room to a level that flatters a book and a face at the same time. “Entertaining” brings up accent lighting and leaves the centre of the room slightly darker. “Cleaning” brings everything to full brightness so nothing gets missed. The keypads themselves are fully configurable and custom-engraved — never a generic, unlabelled grid of buttons that means nothing until you’ve memorised it.

Lutron or Crestron — Which Lighting System is Right for You?

The two brands we specify for lighting control on almost every project are Lutron and Crestron. In most cases, the decision comes down to your property type and whether the project is a new build, a renovation or a retrofit.

For retrofit projects — existing homes, period properties, listed buildings and any situation where rewiring walls is not practical — Lutron RadioRA 3 is the system we reach for first. Launched in the UK in January 2025, it is a fully wireless professional lighting and shading system that installs over your existing wiring using Lutron’s proprietary Clear Connect RF technology, which operates entirely independently of your Wi-Fi. No chasing, no channelling, no disruption — and the same quality of dimming, keypad design and scene control you would expect from any Lutron system. RadioRA 3 introduces the Vierti keypad — Lutron’s newest and most elegant wall control — and supports Lumaris tunable white lighting, giving a genuine route to circadian-style lighting in a property that will never be rewired.

For large new builds and properties where wired infrastructure is available, Lutron Homeworks QSX is the definitive choice — unlimited zones, the full Lutron designer keypad range (Alisse, Palladiom, Avienna) in dozens of finishes, and native support for Ketra full-spectrum tunable lighting, which goes well beyond simple warm-to-cool dimming to replicate the actual colour and intensity of natural daylight throughout the day. On the most demanding projects, we combine Homeworks QSX with Crestron home automation, giving clients a single bespoke control interface for lighting, AV, climate, security and more.

We have been installing both systems since 1998 and are certified dealers for Lutron and Crestron. If you are unsure which system suits your home, we offer free consultations at our London or Cheshire offices, or at the Lutron Experience Centre in London. Get in touch to arrange a visit.

Ketra, Lumaris and Rania — Lighting That Knows What Time It Is

Dimming brightness is only one part of what a current Lutron system can do. The more significant development of the past few years is full-spectrum and tunable lighting — adjusting not just how bright a light is, but its colour temperature and, on the most capable systems, its precise spectral composition.

Ketra is Lutron’s flagship full-spectrum system, covering 1,400K to 10,000K with access to 16.7 million colours and Color Lock technology that keeps colour output accurate over the fixture’s lifetime. Its signature feature, Natural Show, tracks the actual position of the sun at a property’s GPS coordinates and shifts colour temperature and intensity throughout the day to mirror natural daylight automatically — cool and energising in the morning, warming progressively through the afternoon, settling to a relaxing tone by evening, with no manual scheduling required. Ketra requires Homeworks QSX.

Rania delivers a three-channel tunable white range (1,800K–5,500K) with a CRI above 90, built on the same colour science as Ketra at a more accessible specification — the right choice for supporting rooms where light quality still matters but Ketra’s full capability isn’t required.

Lumaris is Lutron’s tunable and RGB tape light family, and the one product in this trio that works on both RadioRA 3 and Homeworks QSX — meaning genuine circadian-style lighting (via RadioRA 3’s Day/Night Mode) is achievable on a retrofit project as well as a new build. Read our complete guide to dimming protocols, Ketra, Lumaris and Rania →

Why a Badly Specified LED Retrofit Goes Wrong

One of the most common service calls we receive is on systems we did not originally install: an electrician has swapped halogen lamps for LED on a like-for-like basis and the result flickers, buzzes, or won’t dim below a certain level. This isn’t a fault with LED technology — it’s almost always a mismatch between the dimming protocol the original switches were built for and the electrical behaviour of a modern LED driver. Older leading-edge dimmers, designed for resistive halogen and incandescent loads, are frequently incompatible with the capacitive characteristics of LED drivers, which generally need trailing-edge dimming to run cleanly. On larger or more sophisticated installations, we specify DALI — a digital, individually addressable, bidirectional protocol that lets the system query every fixture’s actual status and detect failures remotely, rather than relying on guesswork across hundreds of circuits. We check every driver’s specification against the dimming method in place before any retrofit, or — far more often, on a serious project — specify the protocol and the fittings together from the outset. Read our full technical guide to dimming protocols →

Electronic Curtain & Blind Controls

Adding curtains and blinds into a lighting control system creates a truly automated home — curtains and blinds close automatically when darkness falls and can open automatically at sunrise. Our systems offer control at the push of a button, which can automatically be replicated when you aren’t at home: a holiday mode ensures your property always looks occupied, with curtains and blinds following your usual pattern rather than running on a single fixed timer. Advanced control of curtains and blinds also helps regulate temperature naturally — if light levels and temperature are rising in rooms on one side of the property, the system can close blinds incrementally to manage solar gain before air conditioning is needed at all, with the degree of closure responding to the actual intensity of the sunlight. The same system protects fabric, soft furnishings and artwork from the bleaching effect of direct sunlight, and a single button press can close blinds across every communal room in the home simultaneously.

Lutron is the world’s largest manufacturer of motorised window treatments, and integrating shading through the same Lutron system as the lighting — rather than a disconnected third-party shading system — consistently produces a better result: quieter motors, more reliable scene integration, and one system to commission rather than two. Lutron Palladiom wire-free shades are battery-powered with a 3–5 year battery life and install without any new wiring at the window — genuinely useful for a retrofit where chasing cable to every window simply isn’t an option. Read our complete guide to Lutron motorised blinds and shading →

Mood Lighting Control Systems for Single Rooms and Whole Homes

Lighting control systems can be installed in a single room during a renovation or extension just as effectively as across an entire estate. The modern open-plan kitchen/diner/living room is a particularly strong case for proper lighting design — a single large space genuinely benefits from a system that gets the lighting right for cooking, dining and watching television without those three activities fighting each other for the same fixed set of switches. Most of our systems require different wiring from a traditional installation, which is why we recommend specifying lighting control at the same stage as a renovation or extension rather than retrofitting it afterwards wherever a wired system is the right choice. Each lighting channel is wired back to a central dimmer — a channel can be a single light or a group of several — and the more finely a room’s lighting is split into channels, the more precise the eventual control. Lighting keypads, wired in low-voltage cable, recall any combination of those channels at a single button press, with local keypads in different areas of a room controlling what’s nearby alongside a global all-off button for the whole space at night.

Bespoke Lighting Design — High End Lighting Solutions

Well-designed lighting transforms spaces into warm, inviting environments and highlights architectural and interior features — and of every service we provide, lighting design and control has the single largest effect on how a finished room actually feels. Lighting affects perception and enjoyment of a space directly, which is why we like to be involved at the earliest possible stage of a new build or retrofit, designing a lighting scheme that adds genuine warmth and character rather than simply illuminating a floor plan. Every Crestron and Lutron system we commission starts as a set of flat reference scenes — 100%, 75%, 50%, 25% — and we only finalise the real scenes once decoration and furniture are in their final positions, because lighting a finished room is a fundamentally different exercise from lighting an empty shell. Our fully configured scenes use a number of established techniques to show a space off at its best, varying room to room: LED strip lighting to illuminate bookshelves, picture lights to enhance artwork, directional spotlights to draw out architectural detail. One advantage worth understanding properly: a lighting control system lets a fitting be illuminated even when its actual light output isn’t required — dimming a ceiling downlight to 10% produces negligible usable light, but the glow from the fitting itself adds genuine warmth and depth to a room that a switched-off downlight simply cannot.

We partner with the manufacturers who produce the highest quality fittings available, ensuring consistent colour temperature from every lamp in a room and fully reliable dimming across the full range — a detail that matters enormously once multiple fittings from different ranges are mixed in the same space and need to match. The large majority of our fittings are LED, using minimal energy with a rated life around 50,000 hours, across a genuinely broad range — downlights, uplights, LED strip and LED lamps that directly replace traditional fittings.

For the full lighting package — design, specification and installation working together from the outset — see our dedicated page on Residential Lighting Design.

Lighting Control Installers by Location

We have installed lighting control systems across London, Cheshire, Surrey, Dubai and the French Alps. For location-specific Lutron and Crestron installation pages, see below.

• Lutron Lighting Installer London
• Lutron Lighting Installer Cheshire
• Lutron Lighting Installer Surrey
• Crestron Automation London
• Crestron Automation Cheshire
• Crestron Automation Surrey

Frequently Asked Questions — Home Lighting Control Systems

What is a home lighting control system?
A home lighting control system lets you manage every light in your property from a single, coherent interface — recalling pre-set scenes for different activities, automating schedules and dusk/dawn behaviour, dimming individual circuits precisely, and integrating with shading, AV and security. Systems range from a single-room dimmer set-up to whole-estate platforms like Lutron Homeworks QSX, controlling hundreds of zones across multiple buildings from one set of keypads.

How much does a home lighting control system cost in the UK?
A wireless Lutron RadioRA 3 system for a four-bedroom home typically starts from around £8,000, including design, installation and programming. A full Lutron Homeworks QSX system for a larger property starts from £25,000. We provide free, no-obligation consultations and detailed quotations for every project size.

Can smart lighting be added to an existing home without rewiring?
Yes. Lutron RadioRA 3 is a fully wireless lighting control system that installs over your existing wiring using Lutron’s proprietary Clear Connect RF technology — no chasing walls, no pulling cables. It is the ideal specification for retrofits in period properties, listed buildings and any home where rewiring is impractical.

What is the best smart lighting system for a luxury home in the UK?
For luxury homes, Lutron remains the benchmark for dimming quality, keypad design and long-term reliability. Lutron Homeworks QSX is the preferred choice for large new builds or major renovations, with native support for Ketra full-spectrum lighting. Lutron RadioRA 3 offers comparable elegance for retrofits and mid-to-large homes via a wireless, non-disruptive installation. Custom Controls specialise in both systems.

Why do my LED lights flicker, buzz or refuse to dim properly?
Almost always because the dimmer and the LED driver use mismatched technologies — most commonly an older leading-edge dimmer paired with a driver built for trailing-edge dimming. We check every driver’s specification against the installed dimming method before any retrofit, and resolve the great majority of flicker and buzz complaints by correcting this single mismatch. Read our full guide to dimming protocols →

Can lighting control integrate with my Crestron system?
Yes. Lutron lighting control systems — including Homeworks QSX and RadioRA 3 — integrate natively with Crestron. We regularly design systems where Lutron handles all lighting and shading while Crestron provides unified control of AV, HVAC, access control and security from the same interface.