A combination of Hamilton Litestat’s Linea Rondo plates with its Digital Mercury lighting control system, have been featured at a major refurbishment project in Poole in Dorset. This luxury apartment, which is located in an art deco styled building within the Sandbanks conservation area, has stunning views across to Studland on the Isle of Purbeck as well as views down to the island of Brownsea. This beautiful area with its long stretch of sand is managed by the National Trust and is recognised for offering one of the best beaches in Europe.
To provide a luxury apartment which is able to support a £1million plus price tag, the current owners have gutted the whole space in order to create large open plan living areas with the very latest high end specification in order to provide the all important ‘WOW’ factor. The project, which took a year to complete, included the replacement of the all the bathrooms and the kitchen. The new interior now incorporates a wet room within the master bedroom suite and a new open plan kitchen/dining space which gives superb vistas over the Sandbanks harbour.
As the owners are in the lighting trade and have a number of lighting shops within the locality they are familiar with the extensive range of wiring accessories and lighting control systems that are currently available on the market. To complete the interior design they selected Hamilton’s flag ship Linea Rondo Collection which not only provides them with innovative styling and a very high quality top end plate finish, but also one which would be able to incorporate the electronic components and devices required for the Digital Mercury Lighting Control System.
Developed to suit current minimalist trends it provides the advantages of grid fix and secret screw fixings, along with the attractive visual appeal of split finishes which can be used to create cutting edge design. For this application the plates have featured a combination of a satin chrome plate finish with reflective bright chrome on the edge of the outer frame. This design choice helps to minimise the problems associated with finger marks on the plate’s surface.
To provide the required scene setting lighting options for the apartment, the client specified Hamilton’s Digital Mercury System. To suit their exact requirements this has been designed and built as a bespoke system to achieve different lighting effects within the various zones. To allow the lighting within the separate zones to be controlled and programmed from the same master controller, Hamiltons has used a multi-zone control plate using the Linea Rondo accessory plate. Remote controllers are used throughout the apartment to operate the lighting system within the various rooms. These plates have been engraved to identify each of the zones.
The owners wanted a lighting system that would be a lot more versatile than a dimmer and would be able to create different lighting scenes to suit the mood of the moment within the separate areas of the home. Being in the lighting trade they knew about Digital Mercury and so selected it to provide a diverse and easy to use system. Due to the complexity of their requirements Hamilton Litestat purpose built the system so that it could address their exact specification. This digital system controls and blends the level of lighting on each of the lighting channels including ceiling lights, table and floor lamps, recessed floor uplighters and the lighting within the bathroom and ensuite areas. Once programmed, it creates different blends of lighting in each of the designated zones to suit the desired mood. Although the system has been preset, it is very simple to change the settings.
Within the kitchen/dinning area the owners are able to programme the system so that they can operate the lighting in the kitchen at full brightness whilst subduing the percentage of luminance level in the dinning and living areas to create more intimate or appropriate scenes. With different scenes to choose from it works very well and is extremely effective.
Within the two bathroom areas Digital Mercury has been used to dim LED, GLS and low voltage luminaries. This lighting effect has been particular effective in the en-suite wet room where the LED blue/white luminaires have been recessed into the floor within the showering area. At the entrance to the apartment a special plate incorporating a master on/off switch is able to power-up the lighting throughout the apartment and then can be used to turn it all off to reduce power wastage.
Discrete low level recessed lamps have been featured along the hallway and these, along with the LED recessed up-lighters on the balcony, are also being controlled by Digital Mercury.
