Smart home installation in Hampstead

The typical brief here is a four or five storey period house, part original and part 1990s extension, where the lighting has grown into banks of dimmers and nobody is sure which switch does what. We survey the existing circuits first, because in Hampstead the saving is almost always in reusing the wiring you already have rather than rewiring rooms you have just decorated.

Where a house is listed or in the conservation area we plan cable routes through existing chases, cupboards, service voids and the basement ceiling, and keep new visible hardware to engraved keypads in the same plate finish throughout. External work — cameras, door stations, shading motors — is sited so it is invisible from the street elevation.

Phasing suits these houses well. We commonly start with the ground floor and the entrance, then add shading, heating zones and music floor by floor as decorating allows, leaving spare capacity in the rack and the cabling for the next stage.