Lutron lighting control in Beverly Hills and Bel Air.

Why here

Two utilities, two building departments, one standard.

Beverly Hills is its own city on Southern California Edison; Bel Air and Holmby Hills are City of Los Angeles on LADWP. The lighting control system does not care, but the electrician has to, because the dimming panels, the service and the permits differ. What is the same on both sides of the line is the expectation: a Lutron HomeWorks system that does exactly what the lighting designer drew, with every fixture on the right zone, every keypad engraved correctly, the shades quiet and the scenes tuned to the rooms.

County Line installs those systems on new construction, with the panels and keypad runs going in at rough-in by the crew wiring the house, and on remodels of the estates north of Sunset after a survey of the existing wiring. It sits in the design meetings, builds the fixture schedule into the circuiting, and programs the scenes with the designer and the owner present. The office is about fifty minutes away in Newbury Park.

Beverly Hills and Bel Air lighting questions

Wired or wireless

The question every existing house asks first.

Lutron makes two kinds of system. HomeWorks is wired: every lighting circuit runs to dimming panels in a utility room, and the keypads are low-voltage devices on a bus. It is the system for new construction and for a remodel that opens the walls, because it is the most reliable and the most capable. Lutron's wireless systems put the dimmer in the wall box where the switch was and talk to a processor by radio. They are the right answer for a finished house that is not being gutted, and they are a great deal better than the smart bulbs and plug-in dimmers that get abandoned after a year.

County Line installs both and tells you which one the house can take. The survey is where that is decided, and it is free.

Logistics

How County Line works in Beverly Hills and Bel Air.

The office is in Newbury Park, about fifty minutes away. Lighting projects are scheduled by the phase: the rough-in crew stays for the rough-in, the trim and programming crew stays until the last scene is right. The company says this plainly because a contractor who pretends to be local to every city on its website is not telling the truth about any of them, and because the honest version is still a good one: a crew that is on site for the duration of a phase does better work than one that drives in for an hour.

Service visits, generator maintenance and small jobs are scheduled in batches by area, so the crew is in one part of the map for the day rather than crossing it.