It’s time for a beautiful switch. Their words, not mine, but one might say that they basically took the words right out of my mouth. Over the next few months, I’m partnering with Legrand to showcase its adorne line of outlets and switches as part of a big–and very necessary–electrical system overhaul in our new home.
Electrical improvements yield utter amazement around here, and every homeowner should go through the trouble of swapping out the dingy outlets and switches because CLEAN SWITCHES MAKE SUCH A DIFFERENCE, OMG.
As I began to show in my first post about the cool Legrand products, we opted for a few less-than-traditional options when it came to upgrading the switches throughout our home. The push button switch options were a fun consideration for the kid’s rooms, but there was actually a more purposeful reason that I went in that direction when it came to updating the hallway light switches.
Because of the way that the house was wired, we have several 3-way light switches so that we can turn on and off the lights conveniently, without needing to walk to the other end of the house to access a single switch. It’s a nice feature, and lots of homes are equipped with 3-way switches, but the switches themselves are never facing up or down with proper respect to whether the lights are on or off, because you turn it on in one location, and then off in the second location, leaving the first switch flipped upwards but don’t you dare try and fix it because then, it’ll be down and the lights will be on and all of this drives me batty. (For example, with reference to this next picture, would you know that all of the house lights are off? Batty, I tell you. And, I suppose you don’t now need further evidence that every homeowner should swap out grimy looking switches like ours.)
The push button switch options renewed my hope in having a less OCD-lifestyle, and they’re sexy too. Little square! And a locator status light that I will explain the purpose of further down.
As I demonstrated when I swapped out the light switch in the nursery, it’s a quick transition thanks to the fact that the Legrand products–while looking completely different and more modernized–fit directly into the existing electrical box in the wall. The beginning to end process goes something like this (follow your directions though, every case is different depending on your home’s wiring situation):
- Turn off power (we’re still getting off fuses, so we turn off the whole house just to make sure there’s no zappage potential)
- Remove faceplate and loosen existing switches from the box
- Detach the wires from the switches, and cap them while you work
- Before installing the new push button switches, affix the backside of the faceplate to the electrical box (use a level to get it straight!)
- Wire the switch according to the directions
- Snap the switch into place within the faceplate frame
- Lastly, snap on the top faceplate (we went with mirror white for this space, which is not a mirror but a high gloss cool white)
Now, it’s apparent that these are going to be infinitely nicer to have in the house; they’re sleek, modern, and none will appear “on” whilst “off” and vice versa and so commence my sanity. Pardon the graininess, new switches don’t change the fact that our house still needs 15 floor lamps to make it seem like daylight at 3pm.
The locator status light that I showed in a photo above is one of my favorite features, and one that I decided to implement here for an extra $4 per switch because if you think our house is dark during the day, know that it gets very, very dark at night, dark enough during the first few weeks living here to warrant us walking like zombies so as not to walk face first into walls. Knowing exactly where the switch is on the wall at nighttime will be a subtle–but tremendous–help, and we expect it to be a nice feature for the kids if they wake in the middle of the night too, no futzing around trying to find the switch. Each light is a tiny, tiny LED which we hope only costs us $0.001 each year. (LED Bonus: it’ll last a long, long time.)
Interested in seeing more of the adorne for Legrand product line? They offer way more than just push buttons and shiny white switch plates – I’m talkin’ wireless/motion/dimmer technologies that you probably never knew existed. Check them out.
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