World-Class Crestron Installer & Dealer — Five-Time Award Winners

Specialists in Designing & Installing Large Crestron Systems

Custom Controls have been a certified Crestron dealer since 1998 — designing, programming and installing smart home systems for large homes, yachts and high-end offices across London, Cheshire, Surrey, Dubai and worldwide. We are five-time Crestron Integration Award winners, unique in EMEA, and a Crestron Dealer of Distinction. Crestron is a genuinely complete platform in its own right — audio, video, lighting, shading, climate, security, energy and access control all running from a single system — and everything on this page is about what that platform alone can do. We have access to the Crestron Experience Space in London — contact us to arrange a visit.

Five-Time Crestron Integration Award Winners — Unique in EMEA

Five Crestron Integration Awards, won in five consecutive years. No other installer in EMEA has done it. The awards are judged by Crestron itself against entries from across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Our award-winning entries were a Dubai estate with eight processors and 72 audio zones, a whole-home Derby lighting scheme built entirely on Crestron’s own fittings, two wins for Best High Rise in Europe at Claridge’s and the Beetham Tower, and the first Crestron Digital Media installation in the UK, on Baker Street. Open any award below to see the project behind it.

Best International Project — A Whole-Estate Crestron Installation, Dubai

Our most celebrated Crestron case study — and the project that won us the Crestron Integration Award for Best International Project — is a complete Crestron system spanning two large villas, extensive gardens, a swimming pool, a basketball court, a lake and a stream on a private estate in Dubai. Eight Crestron processors provide integrated control throughout, distributing audio to 72 zones, video to 32 zones and managing well over 400 lighting channels across both villas and the grounds. Five surround sound zones, five Kaleidescape movie servers, four Apple TVs, 24 audio sources and a full Crestron Sonnex audio distribution system serve the family villa, the guest villa, staff areas, offices and classrooms simultaneously.

The scope is perhaps best illustrated by its details: the basketball court has four cabinet speakers mounted on the floodlights with two sunken subwoofers; the garden fire pits are Crestron-controlled; the gym features Artcoustic speakers enhanced by subwoofers; and the master bedroom suite houses a bespoke Stax headphone system with a valve amplifier and DaVinci DAC for private listening. The dedicated home cinema room in the family villa seats eight in Cineak chairs with backlit Onyx tables, with a 3.5m screen and 17 channels of surround sound — one of the most comprehensive Crestron installations ever delivered in the residential market. Read the full case study →

Best Lighting Control & Design — A Whole-Home Lighting Installation, Derby

Where the Dubai estate shows what Crestron can do at maximum scale, this new-build home in the Derby countryside shows what it can do with lighting alone, done properly — the project that won us the Crestron Integration Award for Best Lighting Control & Design, and the first installation in the UK to use Crestron’s own dimmable LED fittings end-to-end, with nothing else involved in the lighting. Over 350 fittings across 200+ channels — each drawing roughly 18 watts while matching the output of a 50-watt halogen downlight — are managed through six distributed lighting racks for clean cabling and full redundancy. The client calculated that the entire house now uses the same lighting energy previously used by just the kitchen and dining room alone. Scenes, scheduling and remote access are available from the wall touchpanels, more than 50 keypads or an iPad, and every keypad is custom-engraved so each button says what it does.

Lighting sits alongside 24 audio zones and 16 video zones over Crestron Digital Media, full heating and air conditioning control, gate intercom distributed via touchpanels throughout the property, and a complete monitored security and CCTV system with automatic camera-follow logic — every part of it native Crestron, controlled from the same wall touchpanels and iPad interfaces used for everything else in the home. Read the full case study →

Best High Rise in Europe — Claridge’s Hotel Penthouses, Mayfair

Working inside the listed Claridge’s Hotel, we installed Crestron-controlled Loewe multimedia systems in two penthouse apartments of three rooms each — the project that won the Crestron Integration Award for Best High Rise in Europe. The interiors are listed, so no new cable routes could be created and nothing could be chased, drilled or rewired. Every decision about equipment and control started with the building rather than the product catalogue.

Every room has a Loewe LED TV and Blu-ray player. In the living rooms, 46-inch Loewe TVs are paired with upgraded audio: the Individual Sound Projector in one apartment and stand-mounted stereo speakers in the other, both supported by subwoofers. Wireless control removed the need for wall-mounted keypads or new wiring to each control position, which is what made a full Crestron system possible in rooms that could not be physically altered.

The design centred on the Crestron TPS-6X wireless touchpanel, which uses RF rather than WiFi for instant response and freedom from interference by neighbouring wireless networks. Each panel carries the Claridge’s crest in a bespoke finish, and guests reach the Loewe LED TVs, Blu-ray, Sky HD and hotel TV from one interface that had to be intuitive for guests of any nationality with no instruction. Read the full case study →

Most Innovative Control — The First Crestron Digital Media Installation in the UK, Baker Street

This modern townhouse near Regent’s Park was the first Crestron Digital Media installation in the UK, and won the pan-European 2010 Crestron Integration Award for Most Innovative Control Solution. It also became an official Crestron case study. HD audio and video from Sky HD, ArabSat, Apple TV and a Kaleidescape server reach eight TVs over Cat5e cable, with an audio matrix feeding ceiling speakers in each room, including DAB radio.

Centralising the sources means one Sky HD, ArabSat, Apple TV and Kaleidescape installation serves the whole house rather than a box beside every television. The Kaleidescape server holds the client’s film collection for instant access in any room, and the CCTV cameras appear as just another source on any screen. The interface was programmed from scratch around the property and the people living in it, with weather feeds and local times for each of the client’s international home locations embedded on the touchpanel home page.

Lighting, heating, Hitachi air conditioning and an Axis IP CCTV system run from the same Crestron interface, on a mix of wired TPS-6L and wireless TPS-6X touchpanels, with iPhone control from anywhere in the world, including switching on the underfloor heating during the transfer from the airport. The Axis cameras are viewable from the client’s laptop or full-screen on a touchpanel at home, with a large storage server keeping all footage available for analysis. The interface is so intuitive that the client turned down training, and it is used regularly by non-English-speaking staff. Read the full case study →

Best High Rise in Europe — Beetham Tower Penthouse, Manchester

The top two floors of the 168.87m Beetham Tower, the highest residential living space in Europe at the time of installation, won us the 2009 Crestron Integration Award for Best High Rise in Europe and became an official Crestron Digital Media case study. The biggest challenge was not distributing audio and video but controlling the building management systems: underfloor heating, ventilation, swimming pool temperature and the irrigation for a 4,000 square foot rooftop olive grove, all from Crestron 6-inch touchpanels.

Bringing these systems under one controller means the client never deals with a separate thermostat, pool controller or irrigation timer. Temperature setpoints are adjusted room by room with a simple scroll and tap on the touchpanels, and the heating, ventilation, pool and garden sit in the same interface as the audio, video, lighting and security, so the whole penthouse is run the same way.

Alongside the environment sit eight audio zones and four video zones with a Kaleidescape server that stores the client’s DVD and CD collection so several different films or albums can play at once in different zones, and an FM tuner that is particularly popular in the his-and-hers bathrooms. More than 60 lighting channels and 25 keypads give direct scene recall around the apartment, and CCTV, including the private lift lobby, records on a rolling basis alongside a monitored alarm that notifies the concierge and the client, all in one interface. Read the full case study →

Alongside the awards, we are a Crestron Dealer of Distinction, Crestron’s higher dealer level, and we have been certified Crestron dealers since 1998, the year Crestron was establishing itself as the dominant residential automation platform in the UK. For over two decades we have remained continuously active in the Crestron ecosystem, installing hundreds of systems across every generation of Crestron hardware and software.

Crestron Home or Crestron Custom?

Crestron offers two distinct ways to deliver a residential smart home, and choosing correctly between them is one of the most important decisions in any project. Crestron Home is a curated, preconfigured platform — faster to deploy, highly capable, and the right specification for the majority of luxury residential smart home projects. Crestron Custom is fully bespoke programming, written from scratch for properties and briefs that exceed what a configurable platform can accommodate — very large estates, multiple buildings, unusual third-party integrations or an interface designed entirely around a specific workflow. Our Crestron programming service covers both paths, from configuring a Crestron Home system correctly at commissioning through to writing bespoke custom code line by line.

We install and support both, and we recommend based on the scale and complexity of your project rather than steering every client towards the most expensive option. If you are not sure which applies to you, the answer is usually Crestron Home — and we will tell you that clearly during a consultation.

Crestron Home OS — A Platform That Keeps Getting Smarter

Crestron Home OS 4 has moved through a steady run of major updates, and each one has genuinely expanded what a Crestron smart home can do rather than just refreshing the interface. OS 4.1 brought full support for Crestron’s DM NAX audio-over-IP platform, letting music follow a household seamlessly from kitchen to pool deck to master suite. OS 4.4 introduced genuine renewable-energy integration, covered in more detail below. OS 4.6 added simplified DALI lighting control via new DIN-DLI hardware, a redesigned multi-room music experience, and expanded international door lock support. OS 4.7 brought Apple Music directly into the Crestron Home app alongside Spotify, with no special dealer configuration required. Crestron’s new Configure Pro platform, released in 2026, is a no-programming configuration tool that lets us deploy larger, more complex Crestron Home projects faster and more consistently than ever — which ultimately means a shorter, smoother path from first consultation to a finished system in your home.

Crestron Audio & Video Distribution at Scale

Crestron NVX and NAX form the most flexible AV distribution system available for residential smart home projects. NVX distributes 4K60 4:4:4 HDR video over a standard Gigabit Ethernet network — any source can feed any display, anywhere in the property, with no perceptible latency and no fixed routing limitations, while lossless surround formats including Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and Dolby TrueHD travel over the same network without compromise. NAX does the same for audio, built on an AES67-compatible, PoE-powered architecture where each amplifier channel can play an entirely independent source — Spotify, Apple Music or any streaming service built directly into the channel. Both platforms carry enterprise-grade security as standard, including 802.1X authentication and AES-128 encryption, and both scale from a single room to a multi-building estate without compromise.

Both run over standard network infrastructure, so the network is designed alongside the AV rather than added afterwards: managed switching, bandwidth and multicast behaviour are planned for the whole system before a single source is connected. The result is a distribution system that can be extended room by room without redesigning what is already installed, and every source in the rack is controlled and monitored from the same Crestron programme as the rest of the house. Read more about Crestron AV distribution →

Native Crestron Lighting & Shading

Crestron’s own lighting and shading platform is a complete system in its own right, not a bolt-on to a third-party product. Crestron’s CAEN lighting range and dimmable LED fittings integrate natively with the same processor running every other part of the home, and DALI-based lighting is now configured directly through Crestron Home OS 4.6 via the new DIN-DLI hardware — no separate lighting controller, no separate app, no seam between lighting and everything else in the house. We were the first installer in the UK to complete a whole-home Crestron LED lighting installation end-to-end, a project that went on to win the Crestron Integration Award for Best Lighting Control & Design, described in the awards above.

Lighting is also where Crestron and Lutron meet. Crestron’s own range suits projects that benefit from a single native platform, while for the most demanding schemes we pair Crestron with Lutron HomeWorks QSX and let each platform do what it does best, with Crestron providing the unified interface across everything else in the property. We specify whichever suits the brief and are straightforward about the difference. Read about Lutron lighting control →

Sustainable Living — Renewable Energy & EV Integration

A modern Crestron system now extends naturally into energy management and electric vehicle charging, brought into the platform through Crestron Home OS 4.4. EV charging is controlled directly via the Phoenix CHARX system, and native Tesla integration puts HVAC preconditioning, charging status and vehicle lock settings inside the same interface used for lighting, AV and climate throughout the property. For clients investing in solar, battery storage or EV infrastructure alongside a new or upgraded Crestron system, this means one dashboard and one set of scenes covering the entire property — house and driveway alike — rather than a separate, disconnected app for every piece of energy hardware.

Specification matters here, because only supported equipment can be integrated natively. We advise on compatible chargers, inverters and battery systems before purchase, so the energy hardware, the Crestron processor and the household network arrive ready to work together rather than being reconciled after installation. Read more about Crestron renewable energy integration →

Thinking of Upgrading From Control4 or Savant?

If you have an existing Control4 or Savant system that feels outdated or you’re planning an expansion, migrating to Crestron Home is often simpler than you’d expect. Your existing cabling and network infrastructure remain in place — only the equipment changes. We’ve migrated dozens of Control4 and Savant systems to Crestron without requiring a full rewire. Read our complete migration guide covering cable compatibility, timeline and real case studies.

The upgrade is planned in two parts: what stays and what changes. Cabling, network infrastructure and architectural fixtures normally remain, while controllers, interfaces and the programme are replaced and rebuilt around how the household lives today. We audit the existing system first, so the migration plan states exactly which equipment is reused, which is retired and what the new system adds. See also our pages on Control4 and Savant if you want to compare the platforms.

Where We Install Crestron

We have dedicated Crestron installer pages for London, Cheshire, Surrey, Dubai and the Alps, each with local case studies and contact details — London covering Mayfair, Knightsbridge, Chelsea, Kensington, Belgravia, Notting Hill, Hampstead and every London postcode; Cheshire covering Alderley Edge, Wilmslow, Prestbury, Knutsford, Hale, Bowdon and the wider North West; Surrey covering Cobham, Weybridge, Esher, Oxshott, St George’s Hill, Virginia Water and the wider South East; Dubai covering Emirates Hills, Palm Jumeirah, District One, Al Barari and across the UAE; and the Alps covering Morzine, Les Gets, Châtel, Megève, Méribel, Courchevel and across the French and Swiss Alps.

We have teams of trained and accredited engineers available in London, Cheshire and Dubai — working on designing, programming and installing smart home systems full time to deliver projects we can be proud of. Our London office — behind St Pauls — covers the whole of the South of England and our Manchester office tends to cover Manchester and Cheshire. We regularly work abroad.

Inherited a Poorly Performing Crestron System?

A significant proportion of our work is taking over Crestron systems installed by companies that are no longer trading, no longer responsive, or simply did not do the job to the standard the technology deserves. If your Crestron system has never quite worked the way it should — flickering lighting, dropped AV zones, programming nobody can explain, a rack nobody wants to open — we can help. We assess what is there, fix what is broken at its actual cause, and bring the system up to a standard we are happy to support going forward. Read more about our Crestron maintenance, repair and renovation service →

Takeovers are not rewrites by default. Where the existing programme is fundamentally sound and the problems are specific, we fix what needs fixing and leave what works; where it is too compromised to maintain efficiently, we rewrite, and we tell the client which applies before any work begins. Once the system is stable it is documented and enrolled in our proactive remote monitoring, so it can be supported properly from then on.

Crestron FAQs

• Should I choose Crestron Home or Crestron Custom?
  Crestron Home is a curated, preconfigured platform that is faster to deploy and the right specification for the majority of luxury residential projects. Crestron Custom is fully bespoke programming for very large estates, multiple buildings, unusual third-party integrations or an interface designed around a specific workflow. We recommend based on the scale and complexity of the project, and if you are not sure the answer is usually Crestron Home.
• What can a Crestron system control?
  Audio, video, lighting, shading, climate, security, energy and access control, all running from a single system and one interface on touchpanels, iPads and the Crestron app.
• Can Crestron control EV charging and renewable energy?
  Yes. Crestron Home OS 4.4 introduced EV charging control through the Phoenix CHARX system and native Tesla controls, including HVAC preconditioning, charging status and lock settings, from the same interface used for lighting and AV.
• Do you take over Crestron systems installed by other companies?
  Yes. A significant proportion of our work is taking over Crestron systems from companies that are no longer trading, no longer responsive or did not do the job to the standard the technology deserves. We assess what is there, fix faults at their cause and bring the system to a standard we are happy to support.
• Can I upgrade from Control4 or Savant to Crestron without rewiring?
  Often yes. Existing cabling and network infrastructure normally remain in place and only the equipment and control logic change. Our migration guide covers cable compatibility and real case studies.
• Where do you install Crestron systems?
  We install and support Crestron across London, Cheshire, Surrey, Dubai and the Alps, and regularly work abroad.
• What makes Custom Controls different as a Crestron dealer?
  We have been a certified Crestron dealer since 1998 and are a Crestron Dealer of Distinction, Crestron’s higher dealer level. We are five-time Crestron Integration Award winners, a record unique in EMEA.

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