By Douglas Weinstein
All Photos Courtesy of Lutron
The Lutron story begins in the late 1950s in Joel Spira’s makeshift lab in New York City. A young physicist fascinated by the aesthetic manipulation of light sets out to invent a device that would enable people to vary the intensity of the lights in their homes. In 1959, Mr. Spira emerges from his lab with a solid-state dimmer that will replace the light switch in a standard residential wall box, and an industry is born.
In this two-part series we’ll visit with Ben Bard, Vice President of Luxury Residential, to talk all things Lutron. Part One covers lighting controls, motorized shades, and Ben’s journey with the company. In part two, we’ll focus our attention on Ketra and the science of light.
“If you think about what you want out of your home, one of the reasons you bought the house in the first place was because of the views. Motorized shades allow you to maximize the view and minimize glare. It really is a great way to control natural light. And with thousands of fabric options, homeowners and designers can add a high design element to every window – or can choose a neutral palette that quietly blends into the background.”
Doug: Let’s start with the engineering presence at Lutron.
Ben: Almost 19 years ago I came to Lutron straight out of college where I studied electrical engineering with a focus on embedded software. When I got to Lutron, I didn’t really know what a dimmer was, but they were doing a lot of innovative engineering at the time and so that’s when I developed a passion for lighting. I started working in our HomeWorks business and eventually went on to lead the development of this family of products. Next, I ran software engineering at Lutron and then moved on to what I do now which is to run the luxury residential business for Lutron.
Lutron has invested 10 percent of its profits annually in research and development, which is a cornerstone of our innovation success. Lutron is unique in that we employ a significant number of software engineers, which often surprises people. But it takes a lot of software – and software engineers – to make our systems work with the highest quality, which is what Lutron prides itself on.
For example, you’ve got cloud software, app software, tools, ordering tools, system software, and wireless technology. In 1997, we introduced the world’s first wireless lighting control system with two-way feedback called RadioRA. This was a few years before Wi-Fi was prevalent, so here we were introducing a wireless system that gave you keypad-based control of your lights years before most people had Wi-Fi in their house.
Lutron’s Founder, Mr. Joel Spira, called our process designing from the outside in with the outside being the customer needs. We always viewed things through the lens of “What customer problem are we trying to solve?” That’s what we get passionate about. And if we need to develop technology then we do it. And we did.
As an example, you might remember X 10, a communications protocol used primarily in home automation devices. It had a ton of reliability issues. It wasn’t practical to have 10 ganged dimmers or switches on the wall because you wouldn’t know what light you were controlling at any given time without flipping a lot of switches.
And the location where the dimmers were installed wasn’t necessarily the spot where you wanted to control the lights. So, these customer “outside-in” problems led to Lutron developing a lighting control system. The next step was the development of the keypad that had a remote set of buttons that could control multiple dimmers in a room or home.
The issue of needing reliable and intuitive control of lights from anywhere in a home led to the invention of Lutron’s proprietary wireless protocol (called Clear Connect) to help users simplify their experience of controlling lights. This was the evolution of wireless lighting control at Lutron. It represents the history of how we engineered things and why our engineering prowess enables us to continue to innovate in the market.
Doug: Talk about the range of lighting control solutions Lutron offers.
Ben: Lutron offers a broad range of products and price points for residential and commercial applications. We provide everything from an individual (non-system) dimmer for the dining room all the way up to advanced lighting control systems for luxury residences.
Lutron’s entry point into smart lighting is a system called Caséta. This product is available to professionals or consumers and can control up to 75 devices from the Lutron app, local controls on the wall, or your voice. It features dimmers, switches and wireless Pico remote controls that can be fully integrated with a variety of products from leading smart home brands to provide convenience and peace of mind.
From Caséta we move to our RadioRA 3 wireless lighting control system, which is professionally designed, installed and programmed. RadioRA 3 has a 400-device capacity and includes more premium finishes for user interfaces. Keep in mind that Caséta and RadioRA 3 can integrate with Lutron shades, which is where professional expertise is especially welcome once you start discussing how and where to embed shades into ceiling pockets.
When the shade seamlessly drops down out of a slot in the ceiling and covers the window, it’s a beautiful experience and a major design element. It takes the professional to coordinate and execute that well, similar to lighting design with lighting layers and the creation of appropriate scenes. RadioRA 3 is targeted to premium, larger residences where the design professional will curate custom scenes to elevate the overall user experience.
And then after RadioRA 3, we move to Lutron’s flagship home control system called HomeWorks. The system features both wired and wireless devices designed for the world’s most exclusive luxury homes. It’s this system where homes become highly personalized with support of up to 10,000 devices. And really, it’s very much like a commercial system in this case, as it requires high levels of planning. These houses are highly customized, which requires significant coordination and expertise from some of the best designers and systems integrators in the world working together to execute a highly customized bespoke system. The keypad finishes have an elevated design with numerous high-end finishes. Our Alisse Wall Controls are hand-finished in solid brass, the Palladiom Keypad is crafted from architectural metals, glass or polymer, and the Sunnata RF Keypad features vertical LED accents. All options are beautifully designed controls that fit into the elegance of a high-end home.
Doug: Let’s turn to motorized shading and how Lutron has become a leader in the category.
Ben: Mr. Spira used to say, “If we want to be the best at controlling light how could we do that without controlling the number one light source, the sun?” That’s what led to Mr. Spira exploring the idea of motorized shades, which today is Lutron’s largest product category. And it was over 20 years ago that we started on that journey. Ever since then we’ve had the same mindset for quality as we do for our lighting control business: making the best motorized shades to control the natural light in your space.
If you think about what you want out of your home, one of the reasons you bought the house in the first place was because of the views. Motorized shades allow you to maximize the view and minimize glare. It really is a great way to control natural light. And with thousands of fabric options, homeowners and designers can add a high design element to every window – or can choose a neutral palette that quietly blends into the background. It’s a no-compromise product and a popular category that has grown so much over the years. And the benefits are far-reaching – not only do shades allow you to preserve the outside view, but they create privacy, reduce screen glare, and preserve flooring, furnishing and artwork from harsh UV rays. Between the beauty of the fabric which integrates into the design, and the preservation of natural light, shades are an obvious “must have” for homeowners.
And an interesting fact about Lutron is that we own all our manufacturing plants and manufacture all of our products. With manufacturing facilities in the U.S. and around the world, we are able to ensure the quality, design and elegance of the products by doing the extra work ourselves.
We just opened a new 150,000 square foot shade manufacturing facility in Northlake, Virginia. This allows us to scale the shades business to keep up with growth. Today, some residential windows can be 20 feet wide, requiring enormous shades. Shades are large and heavy so when we’re producing, moving and shipping shades you need a very large facility to support this production. This new Northlake plant allows us to accommodate and support our shades customers as the business continues to grow. It’s very, very exciting to add that new facility to the family.
Doug: Walk us through the shading products.
Ben: Lutron began dabbling in the motorized shades business in the 1990s but really doubled down in the early 2000s with the introduction of an ultra-quiet shade called Sivoia QED. At this point, we now have the largest portfolio of motorized shades in the world.
Let’s start with the roller shade, which is a clean, minimalistic product that performs well and has a performance fabric on it. That’s the heart of our portfolio.
Additionally, we offer complete lines of motorized draperies, Roman shades, horizontal sheer blinds, architectural honeycomb shades, tensioned and cable guided products, and wood blinds. We have several specialty styles that are unique to Lutron. And then a lot of highly customized products for skylights, shades that close from the bottom up, shades for triangles, or odd-shaped windows, and the ability to do that with exposed roller shades, so that we have the beauty of the bracket. Finally, the whole line of shades is both wired and wireless making them an easy addition to a new home or renovation project.
If you’re doing a retrofit project or adding onto an existing system, you can do all those styles without pulling power to the ceiling. And, honestly, with the reliability of Lutron’s wireless shades, many people choose them even for new construction because it reduces labor cost and increases the flexibility of project management by adding them at any time. There’s a lot of advantages to going the wireless route and we find more and more people leaning into that option.
Lutron offers motorized shades at every price point starting with the Caséta by Lutron shade, which is a consumer DIY product. Then we step up to Triathlon, which are professionally installed roller and honeycomb shades that are popular and have a great price point.
Next in the family is Sivoia, which is really the workhorse of our HomeWorks family of shades that’s often installed in a pocket and hidden above the window. It offers a very clean, popular look and supports a huge range of windows. And then, the top of our line is our Palladiom Roller Shades with exposed premium metal brackets and beautiful, elegant fabrics.
We offer thousands of fabrics, with samples available on our website. And our incredible Lutron Luxury Experience App brings the showroom to your iPad. You can see some of the fundamental benefits of shades like a black versus a white fabric, differences in opacity, privacy and more. The app simulates some of that to help you understand various fabrics because it’s a very experiential choice when you have so many options.
We’re engaging the design community and systems integrators to help homeowners choose the right fabric that will perform and render an elegant interior. Many fabrics have a high heat rejection, meaning they have fabric color on the inside, but white color on the outside of the fabric which rejects heat. All our fabrics are highly engineered so that they won’t sag over time and will maintain their performance over many, many years. And the hallmark of Lutron shades is they raise and lower in perfect unison and are whisper quiet.
And then for drapes, fabrics are chosen by designers and are custom one-offs in many cases, attached to shade tracks in shade workrooms around the country and around the world.
Finally, as a source of inspiration, we have experience centers spread around the country where you can see what you’re designing and really experience the form and function. Immersing your clients in the lighting and shading control experience will help them envision that “day in the life” scenario and inspire them to utilize the products throughout their home.
Douglas Weinstein is the Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Technology Designer Magazine and the Technology Insider Group, as well as a Partner at TIG Global PR. A thirty-year veteran of the consumer technology industry, he is the Co-Founder and past Executive Director of the Elf Foundation, a non-profit organization creating Room of Magic entertainment theaters in children’s hospitals across North America.
