Some houses ask for a system. This one asked for an entire nervous system: every light, every shade, every door, and every speaker, working from one plan instead of too many different remotes.
This Tanglewood home came to us as a full retrofit: an established house, already lived in, that needed its lighting, shading, security, and music rebuilt from the studs out without tearing the walls apart to do it. That is a harder job than wiring a new build. Every switch location, every drapery track, every camera mount had to work with a house that already existed.
We started with light. Eighty-three retrofit dimmers and switches replaced the home’s existing wall plates room by room, each one programmed into scenes instead of left as a single on/off toggle. A homeowner walking out the door for the evening presses one button marked “Away,” and the thermostats set back, the lights go dark, the shades close, and the music shuts off, all at once.
Motorized shades and drapery followed the same logic. The library, the entry, the primary bath, and the dining room all received custom Hartmann and Forbes treatments on motorized tracks. We worked directly with the project’s interior designer, J. Randall Powers, so the fabric and finish could be chosen purely on look and feel while we handled the motorization and controls behind it. Custom work gets built around the room, not the other way around.
The dining room got the most tailored treatment of all. The wall keypads were papered over in the room’s own wallpaper so they read as part of the wall, not a control panel. The drapery itself was built into pockets behind the room’s cabinetry, so the track and hardware disappear when the drapes are open. Even the speakers were finished black and white to match the room’s palette instead of standing out against it. Every piece of equipment in the room was chosen to be felt rather than seen.
The kitchen and breakfast area got a ten-inch touch screen that runs the house: lighting, climate, music, and camera views, all from one wall-mounted panel. Every other living space, the library, the living room, casual dining, and the game room, got its own television built into cabinetry or mounted flush, each one tied back into a single whole-home music system.
Music reaches sixteen zones through the house and yard, from the entry and stair hall to the back patio and the pool of speakers hidden in the backyard landscaping. Two independent streaming systems run side by side, one tuned for one half of the household’s taste in music, one for the other, so nobody has to share a playlist they didn’t choose.
In the primary suite, a television rises out of a cabinet at the foot of the bed and disappears back into it at the push of a button. The lift cabinet itself is wrapped in the same fabric as the rest of the room, so when the screen is down, what’s left is a piece of furniture, not a box for electronics.
The front door faces the late-afternoon sun, which meant heat and glare pouring straight into the entry every evening, fading the floors and the artwork on the walls a little more each year. The fix is a shade hidden in a pocket built into the ceiling itself. Raised, there’s no sign it exists at all: no visible track, no boxed-in header, nothing to tell you a shade is even an option in that room. Lowered, it blocks the sun and gives the family privacy from the street without changing how the entry looks for a minute of the day it isn’t in use.
At the front door, a hardwired video doorbell replaced a WiFi unit the family had tried before, chosen specifically for the more reliable connection a wired system gives over a battery-powered one. The drive gate, the pedestrian gate, and all three garage doors were brought onto the same Crestron app, with a keypad and mag lock at the pedestrian entrance for anyone arriving on foot.
Behind the walls, an enterprise-grade wireless network was built out with access points sized to the square footage of the house, indoors and out, so that every touch panel, camera, and streaming device stays connected without a dead zone. Surveillance cameras cover the property from multiple angles, including a dedicated view of the pool, all recording to a dedicated on-site system the family can check from anywhere. The entire network is remotely monitored, so most issues get caught and corrected before anyone in the house notices there was a problem.
None of it announces itself. That is the point of a system this size: the house simply works, room to room, the same way every time, for a family that never has to think about how.
Built in partnership with Windham Builders and interior designer J. Randall Powers.
