Control4, the smart home brand for SnapAV, has introduced Essential Lighting, an expansion to the Control4 Wireless Lighting line, to professional integrators in North America. The new Essential Lighting models include just the essential smart home features, making them an affordable choice and attractive option for even the smallest Control4 project.
For customers who typically only budget for smart lighting in primary rooms, such as the family room, dining room, or home theater, Essential Lighting makes it more affordable for them to add to other areas of the home, such as bathrooms, the laundry room, garage, and more. Designed to enable the addition of essential smart lighting features to any project, the affordability of the Control4 Essential Lighting line provides flexibility and introduces new homeowners to the smart lighting experience.
“Smart lighting enhances the smart home, but even big projects may skip smart lighting in ancillary spaces like closets, basements, attics, and bathrooms due to budget constraints. Most homeowners with Control4 systems who have lighting in one room want to expand the system throughout the entire home once they’ve experienced it,” said Charlie Kindel, chief product & technology officer, SnapAV. “The Essential Lighting line adds to our existing smart lighting solutions to bring a comprehensive line of intelligent lighting with features and price points for every application.”
Essential Lighting also enables professionals to mix-and-match with existing Control4 Wireless Lighting and Centralized Lighting to meet the needs of any project. Great for retrofit or new builds, professionals can easily replace dumb light switches with one of three new in-wall Decora models including a Dimmer, Switch, and Auxiliary Keypad, or homeowners can quickly automate lamps and other plug-in devices with a new plug-in dimmer or switch. All Essential Lighting products are programmable in Composer and include a single blue LED.
The Control4 Essential In-Wall Dimmer is compatible with dimmable LEDs and CFLs, incandescent, and halogen bulbs. The Control4 Essential Wireless In-Wall Switch provides on/off control of lighting, motors, and pumps, and is compatible with virtually all 110-277V AC lighting load, with a simple rocker, the switch has a blue LED to show the light status. The Control4 Essential Auxiliary Keypad is an economical solution for 3-, 4-, and 5-way control of a load using existing in-wall wiring to connect to the Control4 Essential Dimmer or Switch or use up to five Essential Auxiliary Keypads with a single load-control device. The Control4 Plug-In Outlet Dimmer is an easy way to add lamps or other non-grounded lighting devices to your Control4 system. Plug it into a standard electrical outlet to dim incandescent, halogen, and dimmable LED and Florescent bulbs. The Control4 Plug-In Outlet Switch is a single relay, grounded, dual-outlet switch that provides on/off control of lamps, lighting, motors, and pumps.
Control4 Essential Lighting was designed to facilitate fast, simple installs and does not require special electrical training. Essential Lighting dimmers and switches can be wired with a simple space-saving screw terminal. The products then detect line and load to prevent errors and can easily daisy-chain to create multiple configurations. The faceplates complement those in the Control4 Wireless Lighting and Centralized Lighting lines, with matching white, matte snow white, black, and light almond colors, or upgrade to Control4 screw-less faceplates for a modern home design.
At $85 U.S. MSRP each, the new dimmers and switches are a new entry-point into smart lighting and offer an affordable solution for adding essential smart lighting features in smaller rooms and projects, or even commercial buildings or hotels.
By comparison, a similar style switch in the more advanced wireless lighting lineup is $180 MSRP. The keypad dimmer, which has even more features and button configurations, is considered top of the line for the Wireless Lighting category and is $250 MSRP.
