Electrical & Lighting Design in our new Home

Too bright, too dark, wrong color temperature – we often notice lighting when it’s missing or poorly placed. However, good lighting should do the opposite: subtly enhancing spaces, making daily life easier, and creating a cozy atmosphere. Yet, achieving this subtle effect is a challenge. But what exactly makes good lighting – and how do you plan it properly?

Before construction begins, a crucial planning step is necessary: electrical and lighting design. To save costs, we decided against hiring a professional lighting planner. Instead, we developed our own concept in collaboration with our architect.

Lighting Planning in our new home

First, we had to understand what makes good lighting. How bright should each room be? What color temperature creates the right atmosphere? How many lumens are ideal? To avoid being left in the dark, we created a table that considers all these factors—our foundation for selecting lamps, bulbs, and their placement in the room.

Gaining an Overview

We browsed countless shops in search of lights that were both functional and matched our style – and budget. Options ranged from simple €20 LED panels to designer lamps costing €10,000. In the end, we set a budget of €5,000 for all lighting to achieve a balance between good general illumination and a cozy, pleasant atmosphere.

Detailed Planning with DIALux

Simulating is better than guessing: In rooms where lighting needs to be perfect at all times of the day, we created detailed simulations. Using DIALux, a free program for private users, we tested different lighting scenarios to find the optimal setup. Admittedly, the software is complex, but anyone familiar with 3D programs can quickly get the hang of it.

Placement & Execution

Once the right lamps and light sources were selected, they needed to be placed correctly. We marked all planned light sources in our floor plan so our architect could integrate ceiling outlets in the concrete ceiling or wall-mounted outlets where necessary.

Of course, professional lighting designers might shake their heads at our approach. But in a construction project with countless expenses, priorities must be set – and in this case, we consciously chose the DIY route.

Electrical Planning

After finalizing the lighting plan, we moved on to sockets, switches, buttons, motion sensors, and the control of the external blinds – in short, the electrical planning. We carefully considered where and which control elements would be practical in each room. This also included deciding which switches and buttons would control which lights. After all, who wants to wander around looking for the right switch?

Smart Home

Since a bus system was too expensive for us, we plan to install smart controls for switches, buttons, and sockets later. We will likely use the soon-to-be-released Shelly Gen 4 in-wall actuators or similar devices that communicate via Zigbee or Z-Wave. These small modules can be easily installed behind existing sockets and switches. With Home Assistant, we can later control every light, shutter, and even the external blinds smartly – without costly additional wiring.

Network Installation

We are also handling the network installation ourselves. Professionals are laying the necessary empty conduits, but we will pull the cables through later and connect them to network sockets (with Keystone modules) and ceiling outlets for access points. We have already described the network in more detail in the article Planning Network Installations in a New Build.

Central Technical Room

Our technical room is the heart of our digital infrastructure. It houses the server rack, which connects all the wiring, as well as the FTTH handover point. In the server rack, we rely on Unifi prosumer hardware: an aggregation switch establishes a 10Gbit connection between the office’s network sockets and a central Unraid server. The server functions as a media server (Plex), NAS, and Home Assistant. All other network cables connect to a 24-port PoE switch, which provides both data and power to access points and additional network sockets.

This is our current status in electrical and network planning. These details will make our future home not only functional but also flexible for future projects.