There are plenty of cool ways to light stairs these days, but one of the most elegant solutions I’ve seen was the illuminated handrail at Loxone’s show house in Austria.
We all know that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so we set about emulating the design in the new Automated Home.
Stainless Steel Handrail
We found a local engineering business that could do the custom metal work and gave them the dimensions for our handrail along with some detailed photos I’d taken from the Loxone house.
I was particularly keen to replicate two important details from the show home. The first was to make sure that the channel for the LED tape was continuous and uninterrupted by the brackets that hold it to the wall. The second was to create a path inside one of the wall fixings to hide the cable entry for the cleanest look.
The U-shaped stainless steel box section measures 40mm x 40mm with a channel of approx 25mm x 25mm inside. Once it was delivered, Epitome Living got to work attaching the 18mm aluminium profile with high strength adhesive inside the channel.
As with the other locations in the house we used warm white (3000-3500K) RGBW 24v tape which has 60 LEDs per meter. It was then soldered up and stuck onto the profile, before finally fitting the diffuser strip.
LED Handrail
The black 5 x 1mm core LED cable runs back to our cabinet where it connects to one of the Loxone RGBW Tree 24V dimmers for control.
The movement sensors will go in next and automatically bring on the lights as we approach the top or bottom of the stairs.
Since the video below we’ve added 3 Loxone LED Pendulums above the stairs too. So whether we want full bright white mode for cleaning, warm red for night time visits to the kitchen, cool blue for party mode or anything in between it’s available at the touch of a button.
