A four bedroom home of 1,344 sq ft (125 m²), lived in for four years. The client came to us through a referral wanting smart lighting, and no appetite for lifting floors or chasing walls to get it.
That constraint shapes everything. A retrofit is decided by what is already behind the switch plates, so the first job was a survey of the existing electrical installation rather than a specification.
Scope grew from there: door and window contacts, motion sensors, energy automation, and the client's existing Ring hardware brought onto the same platform.
| System | Specified and installed |
|---|---|
| Control platform | SH-Pro with a 3D Spatial Digital Twin of the property, on mobile and tablet |
| Lighting | 24 smart switches replacing the existing plates, retaining manual control at the wall |
| Existing devices | Ring doorbell, camera, alarm and sensors integrated as they stood, plus a smart blind |
| Sensors | 12 sensors: door and window contacts, motion detection |
| Energy | Tariff pricing surfaced in the interface, occupancy-driven shutdown, away and holiday modes |
| Automation | Over 30 routines across lighting, security and energy |
| Building works | None. No rewiring, no chasing, no redecoration |
The client wanted smart lighting without rewiring, which makes one question decisive: is there a neutral wire at the switch? Without it, most smart switches cannot be fitted, and the honest answer is often a rewire.
We surveyed the installation before proposing anything. Twenty-three of the twenty-four positions had a neutral, so the client could choose from the full market rather than a narrow compatible list.
A single position had no neutral wire. Rewiring it would have meant chasing a finished wall and making good afterwards, at a cost out of proportion to one light.
We fitted a switch from a different manufacturer that runs without a neutral, matched to the others in appearance and behaving identically in the interface. Mixing manufacturers is only a problem on platforms that cannot integrate across them.
The client already had Ring hardware: doorbell, camera, alarm and sensors, each living in its own app. Those came onto SH-Pro alongside the new switches, the blind and the sensors, without replacing any of it.
SH-Pro's 3D Spatial Digital Twin shows the property in three dimensions. Tap a room to see what is on and what is not, at home or anywhere else.
Two things drove the saving. Automation switches off lighting and appliances in empty rooms, and the whole house powers down when the family is away or on holiday.
The second is pricing. SH-Pro surfaces the current tariff rate and the cheapest windows in the day, so the dishwasher and washing machine run when electricity is cheap rather than whenever the door happens to close.
