I've got Phillips Hue wireless lights. They are a standard light bulb that connects wirelessly to a remote control. I've used them because I changed the way two doors hang and didn't want to get an electrician to move the light switches. They've been great. Phillips also do led strip lights that can be remote controlled if you have a box that connects to your modem. You can then control them with your mobile phone. I haven't tried this system so don't know how complex it is to set up.

Every three months, The Pleasure Home reviews the state of the art in Home Automation, to ensure that its Clients are not only receiving the most cost effective and stable solutions, but that they are also kept abreast of the latest developments ... Our findings on the Amazon Echo are below - we would welcome your feedback on your success or otherwise with this, currently the most established Voice activated Home Controller, or other competitive devices: This month we gathered together an early release of the RAKO lighting control CLOUD GATEWAY, the Mi|Home eTRV Radiator Controllers, a NEST Heating system & the much awaited Sonos integration with Amazon Echo. Up until this point, we had not been impressed with the Alexa Echo - it had problems recognising our instructions, was pretty useless on general questions and stubbornly wouldn't talk to the rest of our house. Well, after a little tweaking with naming conventions and "Alexa Skills", we can now do the following: 1. Multi-room control of Sonos throughout the House playing Amazon Music and TuneIn Radio e.g. "Alexa, play Radio 4 in Kitchen". We couldn't yet play Spotify or Deezer music on a Sonos device by voice control, but we could control it once it was playing a Spotify or Deezer playlist e.g play, pause, next track. However, we COULD play Spotify on the Amazon Echo, although the sound wasn't nearly as good as our Sonos CONNECT:AMP system connected to a little pair of Morel SP-3 Satellite Speakers. 2. We could control the overall Boiler Temperature using the Nest "Skill" and also individually control each eTRV Radiator Valve in the house, so that heat is not wasted in unused rooms. However we could not get back a temperature reading from any of our rooms, other than the NEST in the Hallway - we were greeted with "your device does not support that yet". 3. We could control all the RAKO lighting in the house in a general on/off way and we also created a maximum of 14 custom commands for specific scene controls such as "Alexa, set night lighting" to activate a scene 4 setting for all the downstairs and porch lights. There is also an advanced RAKO skill which is definitely a beta: "Alexa, ask RAKO to lower the TV Blinds" worked perfectly, Unfortunately, we couldn't get the blinds to raise after successfully lowering them! However, requesting a particular scene in a room, or a 50% dim of all the lights in a room worked fine - “Alexa, ask RAKO to dim the Living Room to 50%” So pretty good compared to three months ago - hopefully by the end of the year it will be even simpler to use and we can have a house-wide method of communicating, rather than having to be within 10 metres of the Amazon Echo ...

Hi Laurence, have you considered using recessed lighting uplights to shine up the wall. The reflected light will illuminate the whole room. I would suggest using high power LED Strip like our Samsung Strip, it is 1000 Lumens per Metre and draws just 8.2w of power. If you need it even brighter we have the 2000/m Lumen version. The effect uplighting will create will be less industrial looking than Corn Lamps. Feel free to call us if you would like to discuss further. 01624 819130 / 03333 222 008 Regards, Trevor www.litewave.co.uk

As homes take on more open shared space, lighting & lighting control can play a big part in the out come of interior design. With lounge/kitchen/dining spaces becoming the norm, traditional lighting is heavily constrained by the switch numbers on the wall. Add to this multi-way switching and before long you have ugly grid panels popping up everywhere. To free the constraints & create beautiful lighting schemes, single space or whole home control systems can be deployed. By shifting away from switching each circuit manually you can now create moods or scenes. Create a lighting mood for a specific task like cooking, entertaining or watching TV, and recall those pre-saved levels time & time again. Irrespective of how many switched or dimmed circuits are being controlled, a single gang size switch is more than enough to do it all. Just ask yourself, when was the last time you saw a light switch in an interrior design photo shoot? For those in the home control business this "wall acne" can spread quickly when you add in heating thermostats, blind/shading control, velux controls - clean walls is where its at.