Smart Home in a New Build — from design to handover, all from one team

Building a new family home means making decision after decision: the floor plan, the flooring, the windows and doors, the heating. The electrics and the smart home system often only come up towards the end of that list — when the walls are already standing and the joiner is measuring up the kitchen. Yet the house's ‘nervous system’ is the hardest thing to change afterwards. A badly placed switch, a missing conduit or a distribution board that is too small can stay with the occupants for decades.

In this article we walk you through how we work on a new family home when we take on the electrical installation and the Loxone smart home as a single package, from design to handover. We show what gets decided at each step, what is worth thinking about right at the start, and — through a real project in Sopron that is under way right now — what all of this looks like in practice.

Why does a smart home start at the design stage?

A smart home is not a box you fit just before moving in. A Loxone system is built on the house's electrical installation: every light, blind, heating circuit and sensor is connected to it by a cable. If those cables are not planned in advance, they can only be added later with compromises — or by chasing into the walls.

Planning early has three big advantages:

• Everything ends up in the right place. Switches, sensors and control panels go where they are convenient in everyday life — not wherever a cable could still be pulled through.
• The house stays expandable. If spare conduits and space for an EV charger, a heat pump or solar panels are planned in now, adding them later won't mean tearing anything out.
• You get one system, not lots of separate ones. When lighting, shading, heating and access control are designed together, the functions work in harmony — not from five different apps.

That is why we tell every self-builder: bring in the electrician and the smart home designer together with the floor plan, not after the joinery.

The process, step by step

1. Involvement in the design

At our first meeting we don't talk about cables — we talk about your life. How many people will live in the house? Who gets up early, who works from home? Where will the living room and the bedrooms be, and which way does the big glazed wall face? Is there a pool, garden lighting, a garage, an electric car? These answers show which functions each room will need.

At this stage we also go through the architect's drawings and flag anything that would cause problems on the electrical side — for example if a plant room is too small for the distribution board, or a suspended ceiling is missing exactly where the lighting would need it.

2. Electrical and Loxone design

Based on the floor plan, we draw up the electrical layout: lighting points, sockets, network points, and the positions of switches, sensors and controls. At the same time we design the Loxone system: which module controls which function, where the Miniserver goes, and how much spare capacity we leave for expansion.

We deliberately produce both designs together. That way the electrical layout can never show a conventional switch where the smart home should have a presence sensor.

3. Groundworks and first fix

The groundwork starts early in the build: underground cables and the conduits for the outdoor lighting go into the floor slab or the floor build-up, and we also prepare the location for the EV charger.

During first fix, the conduits and cables go into the walls and ceilings — before plastering. This is where the design becomes tangible: every sensor, switch and blind motor has its own cable. We choose the cable type to suit the job: the 230 V circuits, the Loxone Tree cable for sensors and controls, and for the blind motors a 4-core YSLY cable that carries both the motor's power and its control.

Before plastering, every circuit is ready for testing: at this point anything can still be corrected or added — later, only by breaking into the walls.

4. The distribution board

The distribution board is the heart of the house's electrical installation — especially in a smart home, because the Loxone modules go in there too. For a new build we usually pre-assemble the board in our workshop: there it is built in tidy conditions to precise documentation, labelled and tested, so that on site it only needs to be connected. (More on this: Distribution board pre-assembly in Sopron.)

5. Second fix and programming

After plastering and painting comes second fix: switches, sockets, lights, LED strips, sensors and control panels go into place, and the Miniserver is installed.

Then comes the programming, which in a smart home matters at least as much as the installation. We set up the lighting scenes, room-by-room heating and cooling control, the shading automation, access control and the alarm — and link them all together so the system works as one.

6. Handover and fine-tuning

At handover we go through the system with you: we show you the app and the controls, and hand over the user guide and the photo documentation. What works well day to day, and what is worth changing, only really becomes clear after you move in — so during the first few months we fine-tune the system: we adjust the scenes, tweak the timings and, if needed, add more sensors.

What is worth deciding right at the start?

You don't have to have every answer straight away — that is what we are here to help with. But there are a few questions it is good to think through early in the design:

• What matters in which room? Mood lighting in the living room, a night-time guide light in the hallway, presence detection in the walk-in wardrobe.
• What kind of shading will you have? Roller shutters, external venetian blinds or awnings — this matters when ordering the windows, and it determines where a motor cable is needed.
• How will the house be heated and cooled? Underfloor heating, a heat pump, air conditioning — room-by-room control needs sensors and valve control.
• Will there be an electric car, solar panels or a battery? Even if not right away, preparing the space for them now is far simpler than doing it later.
• How would you like to control the house? From an app, from a wall-mounted control, from classic push buttons — or all three.
• How much spare capacity should we leave? For future additions: spare conduits, room in the distribution board and a network cable to every room.

A real example: a new family home in Sopron we are working on now

Our team is currently working on a new family home in Sopron. The project is still in progress, so here we show the plans and where things stand now — not the finished result.

Based on the plans and the materials list, these are the Loxone system's target functions:

• Lighting throughout the house, with preset lighting scenes — for example, every light switches off at the press of a single button — and room-by-room switching.
• Shading and control of the roof windows, supported by an outdoor weather station (wind, sunlight, rain).
• Room-by-room heating and cooling control, with underfloor heating circuits and BUS control of the heat pump.
• Gate, door and access control, integrated into one interface together with the alarm system.
• Energy metering and integration of the electric car charger (wallbox) into the system.
• A single control interface (app, wall terminal) with collected fault alerts and an uninterruptible power supply, so the system keeps running during a power cut.

The installation is currently at the stage where the distribution network and the cabling are going in. The empty enclosure of the distribution board is already in place, with its cable entries prepared; in the rooms you can see the conduits running in the floors and walls, the flush-mounted junction boxes and the metal suspended-ceiling frames — the complete smart home system will be built on top of all this. Photos of the project are on our Portfolio page.

This project shows clearly why it pays to start early: the weather station, the BUS control of the heat pump, the EV charger and the uninterruptible power supply are all elements whose cabling and location had to be decided before first fix.

How do we work with the architect and the builder?

On a new build, many trades work side by side, and the electrical work touches every one of them: the heating engineer on the heating, the window fitter on the blinds, the floor layer on the floors, the joiner on the kitchen. That is why a large part of our work is coordination.

• With the architect we coordinate during the design phase: where the distribution board goes, suspended ceilings, the plant room.
• With the heating engineer on controlling the heating and cooling: which circuit goes where, what Loxone controls, and where a sensor is needed.
• With the window company on the shutter and blind motors, so that the motor cable is waiting in the right place when they are fitted.
• With the main contractor on scheduling, so that first fix, plastering and second fix don't get in each other's way.

What you see of all this is that there is one person responsible for the electrical and smart home system — you don't have to act as a go-between for the trades.

Frequently asked questions

When should an electrician be brought into a building project?

At the design stage, together with the floor plan. The electrical and smart home system should be designed at the earliest stage — not after the joinery — so that every cable and every preparation ends up in the right place.

Do I have to decide on every function now?

No. What matters most is that the cabling and the conduits are in place — some functions can be added later, during programming. That is why we plan in spare capacity in the distribution board and in the walls.

What is the difference between Loxone Tree and Loxone Air in a new build?

In a new build we generally recommend wired Loxone Tree for sensors and controls, because the cabling is going in anyway. Wireless Loxone Air is useful where something needs to be added later. The two can be combined in one system.

Who programs the system, and what if my needs change?

We do the programming ourselves, as a Loxone Silver Partner. If your needs change — a new scene, a different timing, an extra sensor — we extend and reconfigure the system, usually without any building work.

What happens during a power cut?

That is a design question. In our real example, the control units get an uninterruptible power supply so that the system keeps running during a power cut. What you need in your home is something we decide together at the design stage.

More articles from our Loxone series

• Loxone smart home — what are the benefits?
• Loxone lighting control
• Loxone heating & climate automation
• Shading and blind control
• Loxone security system
• Loxone energy management