Smart Home Installer Cheshire — Crestron & Lutron Home Automation

Smart Home Installation in Cheshire for Large Luxury Properties

Custom Controls are a smart home installer and home automation company serving Cheshire and the North West, with more than 25 years of experience delivering bespoke Crestron and Lutron systems for luxury residential properties. We are 5 x Crestron Integration Award winners, unique in EMEA as the only company to have won the award five times, and five consecutive times. We are also a Crestron Dealer of Distinction. Our Cheshire office is in Didsbury, Manchester, at 41 Whitelow Road, M21 9HG, and our engineers work across all of Cheshire’s most prestigious residential areas: Alderley Edge, Wilmslow, Prestbury, Knutsford, Hale, Bowdon and beyond.

Cheshire is one of our most active UK markets. The county’s large detached houses, new build developments, country estates and barn conversions suit Crestron whole-home automation, and many Cheshire homes extend well beyond the main house into garden rooms, pool and gym complexes, garage cinemas and entertainment buildings, all of which we bring under one system.

Smart Home

Multi-Room Audio

Lighting Control

Security

WiFi & Networks

Smart Home Installation in Cheshire — What We Deliver

Crestron keypad and handheld remote in a whole-home smart home installation

Crestron Home Automation. The central intelligence of every Custom Controls smart home in Cheshire. Crestron manages lighting, AV, climate, security, access and blinds from a single bespoke interface, and for large properties with separate outbuildings, gated entrances and extensive grounds, its ability to manage several structures and hundreds of devices is a defining advantage over consumer platforms.

Lutron Lighting & Shading. Lutron Homeworks QSX for Cheshire new builds and major renovations, and Lutron RadioRA 3, fully wireless with no rewiring, for retrofits in existing homes and period properties. Sivoia motorised blinds and curtains are integrated with the lighting so every scene sets both.

Whole-Home Audio Video. Any source to any room across the property and its outbuildings: Crestron NVX for 4K video distribution, Bluesound or Crestron NAX for multi-room audio, and Kaleidescape for reference-quality film in the cinema room.

Home Cinema. Garage conversions, garden cinema rooms, dedicated internal rooms and media rooms, all designed, installed and calibrated by our own team from our Didsbury base. Read more on our Cheshire home cinema page →

Enterprise WiFi & Network. Ubiquiti UniFi or Cisco Meraki wired networks with a PoE backbone across the main house and all outbuildings, extending WiFi to garden rooms, garage conversions and annexes over buried Ethernet cable or UniFi building-to-building wireless bridges. VLAN segmentation separates smart home, personal, security and guest traffic.

Security & Access Control. CCTV, video intercom, intruder alarm and smart access control integrated within the Crestron system. For Cheshire properties with gated driveways, separate garage buildings, pool houses and staff accommodation, Crestron manages every entry point with individual credentials from a single interface.

Smart Home System Takeovers Cheshire

Crestron 3-Series control processors in an equipment rack

Cheshire has a significant number of smart home systems installed during the 2000s and 2010s by companies that have since closed or moved on, and system takeovers are a major part of our Cheshire workload. We audit the existing system, diagnose what is working and what is not, reprogramme to our standard, replace outdated hardware where necessary and enrol the system in our remote monitoring service.

Every takeover starts with a full assessment: we document the existing system, identify every issue and present a clear plan before touching anything. Where an equipment rack does not meet our standard we rebuild it, re-running and labelling every cable at both ends with proper separation between power, network and signal, and we hand over a full as-built schematic, something most of the installations we take over have never had.

If you have a smart home system in Cheshire that is underperforming or no longer supported, contact our Cheshire office. Read more about our system takeover, repair and renovation service →

One System for the Whole Property

Many Cheshire homes extend well beyond the main house, with garden rooms, annexes, garages converted into cinemas and entertainment buildings. We design the network, control and AV as a single system across every structure, so the same touchpanel or phone can manage the house, the garden building and the gates. On our modern Cheshire cinema project, a film paused in the cinema can be continued on a poolside display, because four displays and three stereo audio zones across the complex share the same sources over a Crestron distribution backbone.

Smart Home Support & Maintenance Cheshire

Every smart home system we install in Cheshire is enrolled in our remote monitoring service from day one. We receive automatic alerts when any element degrades and resolve the majority remotely. We offer annual smart home maintenance contracts with scheduled preventative maintenance visits, software updates, programming refinements and priority response, and our Didsbury-based engineers attend on site across all Cheshire postcodes whenever a visit is needed.

Cheshire Areas We Serve

Alderley Edge · Wilmslow · Prestbury · Knutsford · Hale · Hale Barns · Bowdon · Altrincham · Bramhall · Poynton · Macclesfield · Nantwich · Chester · Tarporley · Northwich · Frodsham · Congleton and all Cheshire postcodes. We also work regularly across Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Yorkshire and the wider North of England.

Every Cheshire smart home is designed, installed and supported by our own team from the Didsbury office, so the engineers who know your system are the ones who answer when you call. We work across new builds, major renovations and takeovers of existing systems, and we regularly join projects through local architects, interior designers and main contractors at the design stage.

Smart Home Projects in Cheshire

Our Cheshire work often centres on entertainment spaces that have to work with the rest of the house, from a single garage cinema to a multi-zone building in the grounds. The write-ups below describe what we installed in each, and the case studies that follow cover a Cheshire garden cinema and one of our award-winning whole-home Crestron installations in the North of England.

Home entertainment complex cinema with Crestron control, Prestbury, Cheshire

Case Study: Entertainment Complex, Prestbury

An open-plan entertainment space in one of Cheshire’s finest halls, where a cinema, a pool table area, a lounge for nine and a kitchen share one smart control system. A single Crestron system with Lutron lighting scenes runs the audio video and lighting for every zone, so guests choose what they want from one interface rather than a drawer of remotes.

Sources are shared intelligently: Sky, Apple TV and Amazon Fire feed the cinema screen and the 65-inch Samsung at the pool table, either together or independently, and the lounge has its own speakers for background music or the full cinema soundtrack. Each area keeps its own audio video and lighting, so the room can serve several activities at once.

It is a good example of smart home design for entertaining: one control system, zoned lighting and shared sources in a space that still has to feel like part of the house. The cinema end adds a 3.8m acoustically transparent screen and Artcoustic speakers powered by a Trinnov package. Read the full write-up →

Modern home cinema room with Little Greene Dark Lead walls, Cheshire

Case Study: Modern Cinema Room, Cheshire

A new home entertainment complex with garaging, a pool, a gym and extensive terraced seating, where one Crestron distribution backbone carries audio and video throughout. Four displays and three additional stereo audio zones share the sources of the 6m x 7m cinema, so a film paused in the cinema can be picked up on a poolside display.

The same thinking applies inside the cinema: the lighting dims automatically when a film starts, the curtain spotlights and each row are independently controllable, and the motorised Cineak Fortuny seats return to their home position when the room is switched off, so nothing needs resetting.

The brief was open-ended: the best possible room, with a real wow factor. The result is a complex that lives as one system, from the cinema’s Krix and Trinnov audio to the poolside displays. Read the full write-up →

Home cinema with speakers colour-matched to the paint, Knutsford, Cheshire

Case Study: Colour-Matched Cinema Room, Knutsford

A house undergoing full renovation and extension, where we designed the whole-home entertainment system and mood lighting control for the wider property alongside a 6m x 8m cinema room. The cinema runs into a bay window with doors out to the garden and is designed for a warm and intimate feel.

For a project like this the smart home starts on paper: we produced cabling schematics and construction drawings for the build team before anything was fixed to a wall, then installed and calibrated the system after decoration. The cinema’s Artcoustic speakers are colour-matched to the Little Greene paint, so the technology sits quietly within the interior.

Six electrically reclining leather seats with independent headrest and footrest control face a 180-inch Screen Excellence screen lit by a Sony 4K laser projector, and the client’s lounge chair swivels to face the garden so the room works as a reading space too. Read the full write-up →

Whole-home Crestron installation in a new build in the Derby countryside

Case Study: Whole-Home Crestron, Derby Countryside

A new build in the Derby countryside where one system looks after the whole house: audio video, lighting, security and heating. The lighting alone spans more than 350 Crestron dimmable LED fittings on over 200 channels, fed from six distributed lighting racks and controlled from more than 50 custom-engraved keypads, wall touchpanels and an iPad. It won the Crestron Integration Award for Brilliant Lighting Control and Design.

Entertainment is shared as readily as the lighting. Centralised Sky HD, Sony 4K Blu-ray, PS4 and Apple TV sources reach 16 video zones, 24 audio zones can be grouped for parties, and a dedicated home cinema room draws on the same sources as the rest of the house, so nothing is duplicated.

Comfort and safety sit in the same interface: underfloor heating, air conditioning and heat recovery run alongside security, with live and recorded CCTV and follow-the-motion camera logic on a 15-inch kitchen touchpanel and gate intercom on TPS-6L touchpanels throughout the house and garden. It is the smart home as one joined-up system. Read the full case study →

Glass-walled garden cinema studio near Knutsford, Cheshire

Case Study: Glass-Walled Garden Cinema, Knutsford

A glass-walled garden studio near Knutsford that sits in the landscape as much as in the house. The clients wanted to see their car collection through large windows on one side and remain visible from the swimming pool and main house on the other, and the room was designed as part of a landscaping project, so the technology had to work around the glass rather than hide behind walls.

The studio changes character at the touch of a button: motorised floor-to-ceiling curtains close across both glass walls when a film starts and open fully to the garden when the room is not in use. A bar at the rear and eight Cineak seats in two rows make it as suited to entertaining as to private viewing.

The sound is designed to stay unseen, with Artcoustic P6-12 array speakers in fabric-wrapped bulkheads above the curtain line and the front channels and subwoofers behind the acoustically transparent screen. The installation won Artcoustic’s Install of the Month award. Read the full case study →

Frequently Asked Questions — Smart Home Cheshire

Who are the best smart home installers in Cheshire?
Custom Controls are one of the North West’s most experienced smart home installers, with more than 25 years of Crestron and Lutron experience. We are 5 x Crestron Integration Award winners, unique in EMEA. We are also a Crestron Dealer of Distinction, with our Cheshire office in Didsbury, Manchester.

Can you take over an existing smart home system in Cheshire?
Yes. System takeovers are a major part of our Cheshire workload. We audit the system, diagnose what is and is not working, reprogramme to our standard, replace outdated hardware where necessary and enrol the system in our remote monitoring service.

Do you offer smart home support in Cheshire?
Yes. Every installation is enrolled in remote monitoring from day one. We offer annual maintenance contracts with scheduled preventative maintenance visits, software updates, programming refinements and priority response.

Can one system control the house and the outbuildings?
Yes. We design the network, control and AV as one system across every structure. On our modern Cheshire cinema project, a Crestron distribution backbone shares the cinema sources with four displays and three stereo audio zones across the pool, gym and garaging complex.

Can you extend WiFi to a garden room or outbuilding in Cheshire?
Yes. We extend enterprise WiFi to outbuildings using buried Ethernet cable, or UniFi building-to-building wireless bridges where cabling is impractical, with VLANs separating smart home, personal, security and guest traffic.

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