Cliffside Estate Lighting, California
Retrofit Team
Lighting Designer and Installer: Future Automation & Design
Materials
Outfitting a backyard with weather-hardy tech, built to defy the power and erosion of gale-force winds, ocean waves and sea salt, is quite a feat. The integration team at Future Automation & Design recently completed one of its most extensive smart-home projects to date, where a combination of more than 600 Coastal Source outdoor light fixtures and speakers would need to stand up to some of the harshest conditions on the California coastline while blending in beautifully with the home’s eye-catching landscape and casting elegant illumination throughout the property.
“Rockslides and erosion are common along the area’s shoreline, which often necessitates frequent modifications to the construction and design of outdoor living spaces, so we knew the technology solutions would need to be able to evolve and adapt easily to topography changes,” says Future Automation & Design President and CEO Patrick Coleman.
Once topography improvements were complete, Future Automation & Design quickly buttoned up the schematics and installation of the speakers and light fixtures, automating them via a Control4 system with Josh.ai voice control. Every inch of the cliffside estate now is illuminated with a wide range of fixture designs, including path lighting, uplighting, niche lighting and flush-mount lighting, as well as blanketed in rich, high-fidelity audio, courtesy of bollard speakers and subwoofers. The lighting design was so extensive, Future Automation & Design tackled it in several phases, starting with the installation of 210 fixtures in Phase 1, 228 fixtures in Phase 2, 139 fixtures in Phase 3 and 50 fixtures in Phase 4. At least 50 percent of the lighting fixtures had to be retrofitted into existing hardscape.
Today, the owners rarely need to interact with the outdoor lighting and audio. The lights activate automatically at sunset, and simple commands spoken to a Josh.ai voice assistant handle the delivery of music and more specific lighting requests. The owners now are using their outdoor living spaces more than ever—for parties, weddings and other social events.
Outdoor Lighting and Speakers: Coastal Source
The Retrofit
Built in 1930, the estate is considered a historic and architectural landmark in Los Angeles County. The estate has a rich design heritage, having been previously gifted to the landscape architect brothers that designed Palos Verdes Estates in Southern California and Central Park in New York. Later it was inhabited by art curators, celebrities and even royalty.
PHOTOS: Coastal Source
