Electric Home Design can help simplify daily life.

Using electric home design to enhance family life

In today’s busy world, a home that simplifies and enhances daily life sounds like a great idea. For Master Electrician and mother-of-four, Sarah Loveday, it was a must-have.

“I wanted our house to be really user-friendly and operate around my family’s lifestyle,” explains Sarah, who is a third generation electrician and the managing director of family business Loveday Electrical.

With three teenagers and a toddler under one roof, her modern home in Queensland’s North Lakes shows how thoughtful electric home design can create a space that’s both family-friendly and a sanctuary for relaxation.

A home that cares for you

For Sarah, taking the time to plan how her home could work for her family and really add to their daily life, was well worth it.

“I finally have a home that understands me completely,” she says.

“I can make updates as I need, but the biggest bonus is letting my home look after the small details so that I can enjoy time with my family.”

Master Electrician using Wiser Smart Home app

Wiser lighting moments

Sarah has used Wiser to create different lighting ‘moments’ around the house, like after the busy time of dinner and homework when a screen tap turns off the brighter downlights in the kitchen and dining area, leaving softer LED strip lighting for relaxing together in front of the TV.

Tread lights on staircases and dimmed sensor lights in the hallways and bathrooms are a useful safety feature too and helpful if the children get up at night for the bathroom.

Outside, the garden at the front and rear of the house lights up automatically at dusk and turns off later in the evening. “That's one of my favourite things,” says Sarah. “We spent a lot of money on garden lighting, but before we put it on the smart timer switches we rarely used it, unless we had people coming over.

"Every day when I get home in the dark my garden lighting is on and I don't have to remember to turn it off. It makes me really love my home.”

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Master Electrician family in living room

Sarah's advice for good electric home design

“Electrical is in every single room and every single aspect of your home, so planning around that is critical,” says Sarah.

Good electric home design means taking time to think about how you want daily life in your home to look. Where do you like to charge your devices? How warm or cool do you like your house to be when you get home? Where would you like to have lamps, task lighting or statement lights?

Sarah says that it's important to consider where you’ll put beds and desks, as well as TVs and other devices, or appliances in kitchens and pantries, so that power points and network connections can be wired in the right places.

A smart home works for you

Electric Home Design also includes outdoor requirements like work sheds, pools and pumps, garden lighting and water features.

Sarah suggests adding sensors as an easy and effective way to add extra functionality to a home. Sensors for automatic lights are useful in butler’s pantries, walk-in wardrobes or laundries when your hands are full with shopping bags or washing, or to light up your driveway and front entrance to create a welcoming mood when you arrive home.

Sensors can also give you peace of mind by monitoring water leaks and windows and doors opening and closing.“Sensors are really inexpensive for what you get in return,” says Sarah, “and I think they're definitely something that should play a bigger place in the modern home.”

Sarah recommends having an idea of what you ultimately want to achieve electrically, whether or not you can afford to do everything at the time.

“Even if you’re not planning to get everything done during the build or renovation, plan your dream end goal in case there is something critical that needs to be done at the start.”

Sarah says using Iconic smart switches and power points are a great way to give a home basic smart home functionality that can be upgraded as time goes on.

Master Electrician operating Wiser by SE app

Master Electrician Sarah Loveday and child in smart home kitchen

Safe and sound with switchboard protection

As an electrician, Sarah is very familiar with the importance of switchboard protection and for her own home, she chose AFDDs for detecting arc faults which will help keep her family safe, and surge protection which will help protect the investment she made in her devices and appliances.

“Everyone has so many electronics in their homes these days, but they don't really understand the damage that a lightning strike, even just in the vicinity, can do to your property,” she says.

“It makes sense to have surge protection installed in the switchboard to protect your entire home.”

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