Austin home owners look for home theater systems that will make staying home to watch a movie more enjoyable than going out. Many turn to high-end stores in the hopes that state of the art equipment alone will produce this experience. Getting this equipment to work, however, calls for more than superior design and electronics know-how. It requires an understanding of home architecture and room acoustics, and how these environmental factors play a pivotal role in shaping the sound qualities of the system.
ILD offers the eclectic Austinite more than simple equipment sales. Our audio video services process, partnerships with major US manufacturers, and customized installation services are the things that differentiate us as a one-source sales and service vendor in home theater, home lighting and system control, and home automation technologies.
We begin our process with an on site meeting in the client’s home. There, we examine home’s interior architecture to determine which room in the house offers the best possible location for a home theater system. Most custom homes in Austin range from 10,000 square feet to 25,000 square feet. Each room in such a large house is highly unique and has its own specific acoustical qualities that must be thoroughly understood first. A simple knowledge of home wiring and electronics is not sufficient to pinpoint these dynamics. This is why so many third party installers of home theaters, though highly skilled as electricians, often fail to tune a home theater to its maximum yield potential.
It is not a matter of skill or intelligence; it is simply a matter of separate disciplines. Acoustics is a function of architecture, not electronics, and only a design like ours that has partnered with major custom home builders throughout Texas normally possesses these skills. If Illuminations Lighting Design cannot assess the acoustics through analysis of interior home structure, we will even go so far as to meet with the architect or builder to gather this data. There is no cost for this additional consultation, either.
Once we have located the room and analyzed its acoustics, we then choose the appropriate of projector, screen, audio processor, video processor, amplifier, and speakers for the new home theater system integration. While these components are standard to almost all home entertainment systems and available at a number of retail stores throughout Austin, our components come directly from the manufacturers and are rated at the highest level of specification grade quality. Our expertise in home wiring then allows us to install the equipment ourselves without having to subcontract third party entities. We can even integrate a home theater system into the home’s lighting control system, or go one step further and install it as one of many subsystems on a home automation network.
This level of integration and ultra-modern convenience results in a much better sound quality than retail equipment or even public cinemas normally provide. If you are going to a substantial investment in a home theater, why not do it with a team of specialists who can customize every aspect of the system to your residence and personal lifestyle, and who can also personalize it with controls and automation options that make it intuitive and user friendly for everything from family gatherings to formal parties and special occasions?
Illuminations Lighting Design is a full service design build firm specializing in residential and commercial indoor lighting and outdoor lighting, electrical service and maintenance as well as home automation, home theaters, emergency generators, surge protection systems, phone systems and lighting control systems.
We are located in Houston Texas but provide lighting and design services in Austin TX, El Paso Texas, San Antonio TX, College Station Texas, Beaumont TX, Dallas Texas, Midland Tx and points beyond.
Here is our contact information and we welcome your call:
Illuminations Lighting Design
607 Durham Drive
Houston, Texas 77007-5316
(713) 863-1133 Main Line
(800) 863-1184 Toll Free
(713) 863-0044 FaxLabels: Austin Home Theater Installation, Austin Lighting Control Systems, Home Automation Specialists, Home Theater Design
Illuminations lighting Design will soon be opening a new location in Austin, Texas. Already, we have received a number of questions and work from excited Austin resident’s business owners about the multiple service offerings we bring to the table.
We introduce ourselves to the Capitol of Texas not only as a company that can meet all the lighting design needs of Austin businesses and homeowners, but also as a firm who shares the same core values of one of America’s most beloved cities.
What makes ILD’s architectural lighting unique?
We are unique in that we enhance, rather than replace, the creativity of the client. We design architectural and landscape lighting systems through ongoing consultation, and we use our equipment and expertise to complete and magnify what the client initiates.
Austin building owners often have excellent ideas of their own on how to light their buildings. They may not have access to the same equipment, however, that a commercial Austin lighting company such as ILD can obtain. We can obtain fixtures from the world’s leading manufacturers in lighting equipment and install them with special techniques learned from architectural design partners.
By concealing the fixtures themselves, we can light Austin buildings with what appears to be sourceless illumination.
Does Illuminations Lighting also do outdoor and landscape lighting?
Yes, and we do it in a way that is hand in glove with Austin’s Earth conscious value system.
We are one of the few Austin lighting companies to make it a matter of policy to only use environmentally friendly equipment and methods of installation. No trees are ever harmed or damaged in our lighting arrays.
Unlike competing firms who only use two layers of light, ILD uses four. We combine security, tree lighting, architectural lighting, and a number of decorative lighting techniques to develop an entire outdoor lighting system that unifies human progress with Natural form and evolution.
Do you offer indoor commercial interior lighting?
Yes, and we do so with practical aesthetics and power savings foremost in mind. We create an upbeat environment that dispels all pockets of shadow throughout the room. When necessary, we use special fixtures with glare shielding to protect employee eyes and maximize morale by maximizing comfort and ergonomics.
Regardless of the nature or size of any Austin business, our boardroom lighting, executive office lighting, and even kitchen lighting designs can reduce costs and improve office moral with better light and sensibility.
What type of lighting designs do you offer to Austin residential clients?
Lighting control systems, whole house audio, home theaters, and even home automation networks are just some of the many options we can integrate into residential lighting systems.
The exact nature of the system is always customized according the preference of the client. Functionality and taste must be a reflection of the person, not an imposition of the vendor.
Our philosophy is to listen, plan, and equip. Our team consists of licensed electricians and electrical design professionals who can not only install the best systems, but also lay the safest and most cost effective foundation for those systems.
Residents of Austin’s West Lake and South Brodie neighborhoods are also people with high expectations of themselves and lighting their art. They did not accomplish their success by being underachievers. When we work with such a art lighting client, we work to make his or her home a high-performance extension of personality, mind, and activity.
Read more here about the specific offerings we bring to Austin and all of the Texas hill country.
Labels: Austin Landscape Lighting, Austin Lighting Control Systems, Austin Texas Lighting, Hospitality Lighting Austin
Vantage Lighting Control Systems introduces the all new INFUSION SYSTEM. The Vantage InFusion Controller is unlike any other controller on the market today, opening the door to simple lighting control, as well as all aspects of automation. It boasts a built-in Ethernet jack, dramatically faster processor, six times more memory and a built-in USB port. The InFusion Controller is the most powerful automation controller on the market, featuring a dramatically faster processor, 80 times more memory, a built-in Ethernet jack and a USB port. It more than double's the capacity of Vantage's Q Controller, allowing for 120 available wired stations.
Vantage Lighting has long been a leader in lighting automation systems and innovation. Vantage has always found new ways to improve lighting control, and now with the InFusion controller, touch screens, the InFusion software and InFusion integration, Vantage is simplifying the entire automation experience like never before.
Check out these new InFusion features:
- Ethernet Enabled
- Built-in USB port
- 5 RS-232 ports
- D Memory Card
- 120 low voltage stations
- 300 available wireless stations
TouchPoint Touch Screens
Vantage's TouchPoint family - the TouchPoint 550, the TouchPoint 890HD and the TouchPoint 1210HD - are designed to simplify today's complicated control and automation applications. The TouchPoint touch screens put the finishing touches on any Vantage job.Vantage's TouchPoint family eliminates the need for outdated, wall-cluttering light switches and endless stacks of remote controls. They provide a simple, impressive way to control your automated home, office or building.
TouchPoint 550
The TouchPoint 550 is a color, active matrix LCD touch screen keypad with a backlit display. The quarter VGA LCD 5.5 inch diagonal display is small enough to keep the area from feeling cluttered but versatile enough to fulfill the needs of almost any application. It is available in handheld and in-wall versions.
TouchPoint 890HD and 1210HD
The TouchPoint family welcomed two new additions recently; the TouchPoint 890HD and the TouchPoint 1210HD. The new touch screens give users complete control of lights, audio and video, temperature and even offer Internet capabilities, while supporting streaming media and Web browsing, and are another control point when using the Lifeware solution family.
Check out these touch screen features:
- HDTV support
- 16:9 Widescreen format
- Stereo speakers and condenser microphone
- Automatic Touch-to-Wake power save mode for increased efficiency and energy savings
- Ambient light sensor automatically adjusts screen brightness acoording to room lighting
- Ultra-quiet, fan-driven flow through ventilation
A custom-designed touch overlay allows the maximum amount of the LCD's light image to pass through with reduced diffraction, making thse touch screens brighter than any competing LCD touch screens currently available.
InFusion Integration
Envision a home a home that automatically anticipates all of your needs. Just before going to bed, you roll over and touch the "Good Night" button, which turns on the motion activated outdoor lights, arms the security system, closes all the blinds and shades and gently fades off all the lights in the house. A networked home, office, boardroom or classroom can have a variety of subsystems, including window treatments, distributed audio and video, security, heating and air conditioning and lighting. InFusion brings them together in harmony, offering a third-party device library with easy drag-and-drop components, making integration of third-party solutions so much easier.
Distributed Audio
With InFusion you can control your personal music collection in every room of your home with nothing more than an elegant touch screen. Your music can also be effortlessly controlled through a handheld remote or wall-mounted control keypad.
Theater Control
Sitting in your home theater, you lightly press the button labeled "Movie" and the shades are drawn, the lights are dimmed, the projection system turns on along with the surround-sound system and the movie starts. InFusion manages all of today's technology and provides complete control to every system in your house.
Climate Control
InFusion integrates seamlessly with temperature controls as well. Always keep your home at your personal comfortable level. Set the house to start warming up just before you have to wake up, or automatically set temperatures back during the nighttime to save on your utility bill. You can even use outside weather information to control aspects of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning inside.
Security
Feel safe and protected in your house or office building by integrating a security system with InFusion. Security cameras can be simply integrated into a Vantage system with InFusion, making it easy for you to monitor your front door or driveway and know who's coming to your house. Incorporating a security system into your Vantage system has never been easier.
Window Treatments
InFusion can manage natural light. Motorized blinds, drapes, shades, shutters, awnings and even windows themselves, can be controlled with a touch of a button. Vantage systems have astronomical time clocks that track sunrise and sunset, so your environment can respond to sunlight year round. Now protect your sun-sensitive carpets, fabrics and artwork, plus maintain privacy and security, while continuing to enjoy the light and view when appropriate.
Illuminations Lighting Design is a full service design build firm specializing in residential and commercial indoor lighting and outdoor lighting installation, service and maintenance as well as home automation, home theaters and VANTAGE LIGHTING CONTROLS. Contact us at 800-863-1184 or on the web at
http://www.illuminationslighting.com/ for more information for lighting design and lighting control services.
Labels: Austin Lighting Control Systems, Houston Lighting Controls, Lutron Homeworks Lighting Controls, Vantage lighting controls
You're wise to be considering a lighting control system - there are many advantages! One of the main features that our clients like is that with a dimming system you can potentially control ANY of the loads on the system from ANY of the controls or keypads. Additionally you can CHANGE though programming what each keypad controls at any point in the future should your mind change - not something you can do with hardwired switches. This may seem somewhat frivolous at first, but can actually be an excellent tool for both convenience and safety. For example: You can program a button at the top of your stairs to turn off all of the lights downstairs - handy for coming to bed at the end of a long day. Likewise you can have a button by your garage that will turn off any lights that have been left on throughout the house - great for convenience and energy savings! Or turn on a pathway of lights when you come home.
A lot of people like that they can have a "panic" button in their bedroom that, when pressed, will turn on all the lights on the house (or a select pathway), a comforting feature should you think you hear an intruder or have a medical emergency. You can even have, for instance, your front porch lights flash when this button is pressed to guide authorities to the correct house in the event of an emergency. A one-button-control for multiple loads is handy aesthetically too. Assuming your lighting design includes circuits for ambient lights, multiple accent groupings, decorative lights, task, lamps, etc, you will have many loads in each room. To have to turn on, let alone "set," each of these loads every time you walk in the room would be a huge disruption. Instead you can have one keypad at the door with preset scenes that will bring up all the right loads to the right level.
An additional benefit to a lighting control system is that it has several built in features. Among them is an astronomical time clock that allows you, for example, to set your landscape lighting to come on at sunset everyday and turn off at sunrise. No more having to change a time clock from 5 to 6 to 7 as the seasons change, dealing with faulty photocells, or worse, having to remember to turn switches on and off.
One of the favorite benefits of a Lutron Radio Ra lighting control system, from an aesthetic standpoint, is simply that you have much less wall clutter. As I mentioned, once you get several circuits in a large room (and often multiple entries from which to control them) you can literally wind up with banks of wall box dimmers a foot or more in length at each door. That's neither convenient nor attractive! Putting all those loads on a control system will allow you to have one sleek keypad the size of a single switch or (smaller) in any location that you want control.
For more information on lighting control systems please contact the home automation department at Illuminations Lighting Design or call toll free at 800-863-1184.
Labels: Austin Lighting Control Systems, Electrical contractor Houston Texas, Lutron lighting controls, Radio Ra Beaumont, San Antonio Lighting Design
If the lighting in your project is important to you in function, aesthetics, or both, a lighting designer will be a valuable addition to your deign team. Lighting can actually be quite a complex science, needing to take into account issues such as footcandle level, glare, lamp life, maintenance, color rendition, source type, aiming angles, fixture selections, lighting controls, and wattage and voltage constraints. In our office we have a wall 20' long and 8' high where we house the fixture catalogs for all the major lighting manufacturers (and a large majority of minor ones!). It is our full time job to keep up with what the lighting world has to offer and to relay our expertise into what is in the best interest of the client. Because we are independent consultants, not affiliated with any certain lighting brands or showrooms, we are able to recommend lighting designs and specifications without bias.
Although architects' offices, interior designers, and even engineers are often layout electrical plans, their areas of responsibility are so broad that most do not have the ability to become truly educated about lighting technologies and design. Additionally many offices will hand off the lighting plan to a factory representative or showroom that has little knowledge of the client or their needs and will be doing the design and specification based on their own employment alliances and pricing structure. An architect or interior designer that recommends using a lighting consultant is not showing their weakness or lack of knowledge. Rather it's the other way around - they are recognizing the importance of the project at hand and knowing when to call in the experts so that the job is able to reach its fullest potential!
The professional consultants at Illuminations Lighting Design understand how color, texture, form and shadow can be molded creatively to produce the effect required. This can only be accomplished with the correct equipment and a complete knowledge of lamp types and lamp performance. An Illuminations signature design is a space where every lantern, sconce, chandelier, up light and down light ideally balances a room for its precise intent, including hard-to-light spaces.
For more information regarding our lighting design services please contact Tom Kretzschmar via email or by phone at 713-863-1133.
Labels: Austin Lighting Control Systems, Beaumont Fine Art Lighting, Commercial Lighting Designers, Houston Lighting Design Company, Lighting Design Company, Planning Home Lighting Designs
CEDIA is an international trade association of companies that specialize in designing and installing electronic systems for the home. The association was founded in September 1989 and has more than 3,000 member companies worldwide. CEDIA members are established and insured businesses with bona fide qualifications and experience in this specialized field. CEDIA members include Residential Electronics Systems Professionals who have emerged as the
fourth contractor in the building and remodeling industries alongside electrical, plumbing and HVAC professionals. Member classifications include Residential Electronic Systems Contractors, manufacturers, sales representatives, distributors, consultants and affiliates.
For more information regarding
HOME AUTOMATION SERVICES please give us a call toll free at
800-863-1184.
Labels: Austin Lighting Control Systems, CEDIA, Consumer Electronic Design Installation Association, Houston Home Theaters
