Design Tips with James: Electrical

James Treble interior designer and celebrity stylist offers some great tips when it comes to selecting your electrical needs for your brand new home.

Transcript

Today we’re at the Eden Brae Display Homes at Homeworld (Homeworld Kellyville / Homeworld Leppington) and I want to talk about the electrical needs you need to consider for your brand-new home.

Of course, the lighting is a major component of the electrical needs of your home, but there is so much more to deal with when you think of your electrical needs.

One great tip that I always recommend is to consider where you’re going to place the furniture in each room in your house. By working out where you’re going to put these pieces of furniture and your powerpoints - it's going to eliminate the problem of having an electrical cord reaching right across the room or blocking an entryway.

If you don’t know where you’re going to place your furniture, or you like the option of changing the configuration of your furniture at a later date, placing different powerpoints around the room will help you achieve that. Now, in this case, I’ve got one powerpoint on this wall and one behind the sofa. So, the powerpoint for this lamp is hidden behind the sofa instead of reaching over to that powerpoint. I can still use that one when I’m vacuuming the room, or plug in my laptop. And if I want to change this room completely around I can put the sofa against that wall and the lamp there and use that powerpoint as well.

A wall mounted TV like this one looks very stylish and elegant in your home. Your electrical consultant will give you options, like putting the point behind the TV, and one behind the TV unit, allowing all of those messy cords to go inside the wall giving you this nice clean look.

The kitchen and pantry are the busiest spaces in your home, so well placed powerpoints will give you lots of options when it comes to an entertaining and looking after your family.

By considering your floorplan you can work out which wall your bed is going to be placed against, and this will allow you to consider where to place the powerpoints for your bedside tables. By placing powerpoints on the other side of the room, you’ve got a place for a desk or maybe a seating area with some nice mood lighting.

This study has two powerpoints, one on each wall, which gives us lots of options. Now, this one is being used for the table lamp and it’s perfect for the computer… but this empty one means that I can plug in the vacuum cleaner, or maybe the Christmas tree.

Of course, powerpoints don’t just have to be inside. Outside power points like this one give you options when you’re entertaining, and your electrical consultant will help you with this one too.

Your electrical consultant will guide you as to the best locations for your light switches, but we all have different needs. So consider what’s best for your family… and a two-way switch gives you options for large rooms or for lights between upstairs and downstairs, meaning that you can turn them on from two different places.

Other things to consider for your electrical appointment is your telephone point and of course the surround sound for your home theatre, where you can have speakers mounted into the ceiling. Finally, the alarm sensors and the keypad, which should be easy to access when you entering in or leaving your home.

So do your homework, look at your floorplan and consider how you and your family will use the home. That way you will be prepared for your electrical appointment and you will make sure you have your perfect brand new Eden Brae Home.