Here’s a last-minute holiday gift suggestion. There’s something in it for every member of your family. And you can make it happen a lot faster than you might have imagined.

Treat yourself and your family to one more benefit of wireless technology: better lighting!

Install lighting controls in your favorite places in your home. Add lighting controls in those spaces where matching the mood of the surroundings with the activity of the moment will make the biggest difference, such as places where you will be entertaining guests during the holidays, or simply lounging after work.

If you haven’t kept up with the pace of progress in lighting control developments, you’ll be amazed at the advanced technology that has made these products as simple and affordable as they are today.

Lighting controls’ timeline

During this year-end holiday season, as we enjoy all the lights and a good measure of reminiscence and nostalgia abounds, let’s stop and look back to the very early days of incandescent lighting.

The starting point of the historic timeline of lighting controls was 140 years ago. Thomas Edison is immortalized for patenting the incandescent light bulb in 1880. In his shadow, four years later, a British electrical engineer named John Henry Holmes began earning his own patents. In England and the United States, he won patents for his invention of the first light switch that could reliably be opened and closed without the imminent hazards of arcing.

Though he is now largely forgotten, in 1884, Holmes strode forth with the first important step on the journey toward the most sophisticated forms of lighting ­controls. These are available to us today in virtually any setting, but especially in residential applications.

The most significant milestone for lighting controls, however, came 65 years ago. Physicist Joel Spira converted a spare bedroom in his New York City apartment into a lab to pursue his dream of using the latest transistor technology to create a residential lighting dimmer compact enough to fit in a standard wallbox in place of a light switch.

In the 1950s, there was nothing novel about dimming devices, commonly called “rheostats.” Due to their design, however, they were bulky, consumed a lot of energy and produced a lot of heat. Not suited for residential use or popular in most commercial facilities, their most common application was in theatrical stage lighting.

Thanks to Spira’s persistent inquisitiveness, he proved that by using solid-state technology, he could bring a practical and affordable solution to dimming overhead fixtures and table lamps in houses and apartments. Confident in its business potential, he started a company to manufacture and sell dimmers that could replace regular switches. Today that company—Lutron—is literally a household name.

These days, there are many companies that produce and sell lighting control systems of every category.

Home is where the clarity is

To borrow from the old expression that “Charity begins at home,” we would suggest that when it comes to gaining product knowledge firsthand, “Clarity begins at home.” The electrical contractors who treat themselves to a residential lighting controls system for their home will quickly discover how feature-rich today’s products are and how easy it can be to introduce them to existing service and maintenance customers.

When we looked up Adam Mack, senior product manager for the Caseta Wireless division of Lutron, Coopersburg, Pa., to fact-check our story, he mentioned that, while dimming systems have come a long way, today’s online training and 24/7 on-call support have advanced even further. Mack agreed with our assessment that lighting controls represent an excellent pull-through sales opportunity for professionally managed service and maintenance businesses.

Beyond every other advantage outlined in the product literature, lighting controls systems—notably, residential lighting controls systems—have the magical power of transforming interiors into places that suit the present occasion with the touch of a button. That’s what they have always done in performing arts theaters. That’s what they can achieve even better in today’s home.

So, our message to readers this holiday season is: be good to yourself. Add one of today’s wireless lighting controls systems to at least one area of your home. Try it out. We’re willing to bet you’ll add to it before the year is out. (They make great treat-yourself birthday gifts, too.)