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Lighting
Lighting engineering for smart homes
How Smart Citizens engineers scene-based lighting for UAE villas and apartments — circuits, drivers, dimming curves and commissioning.
Best practices
- Design scenes first, then circuits
- Reserve one spare dimmer per major zone
- Label every load at the DB and at the switch
- Commission at night, adjust, re-commission at day
Common mistakes
- Mixing dimmable and non-dimmable fixtures on one circuit
- Assuming any LED driver is dimmable without confirming
- Forgetting minimum load requirements on trailing-edge dimmers
- Using a single scene for both entertaining and reading
Engineering checklist
- Circuit schedule aligned to scene design, not room count
- Constant-voltage vs constant-current drivers selected per fixture
- Neutral wire at every switch position
- Dedicated dimmer per fixture group, no shared loads
- Colour temperature agreed with client before purchase
- As-built lighting drawing signed off before commissioning
Recommended workflow
- Client scene interview
- Fixture selection with driver spec
- Circuit + DB schedule
- First-fix wiring inspection
- Second-fix fixture install
- Scene programming
- Night + day commissioning walk-through
- Handover documentation
Related standards
water and electricity wiring regulations
IEC 60598
IEC 62386 (DALI)
