Seamlessly Integrated Beautifully Designed
Lighting, shading and whole-home automation, engineered to blend into the architecture. Manhattan apartments, Hamptons houses and homes across New Jersey and Westchester — since 2004.
Chelsea showroom · or call 1.866.815.0099
Hudson Yards · motorized Draperies
Lutron HomeWorks Diamond DealerTop-tier authorized · New York
I'm planning my home
Come experience tunable light, voice control, and silent shades working in a real Chelsea apartment setup before you commit to anything. About an hour, no obligation.
Book a showroom visit →I work in the trade
Showroom demonstrations for your clients, help writing the specifications, CEU sessions in our showroom or your studio, work collaboratively with you and your construction team to ensure the plans are executed as designed.
See the trade program →Six projects, and the problem each one had to solve.
Easier to watch than to describe.
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01
Ketra · Lutron
Smart Lighting
Discover how the right lighting can transform your health and well-being—more than you ever imagined.
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02
Palladiom · Sivoia
Motorized Shading
Experience the perfect blend of style, comfort, and wellness with automated shades that transform light into a personal sanctuary.
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03
HomeWorks · Control4
Control Systems
Seamlessly integrate every aspect of light into your home for a truly personalized experience that enhances your lifestyle and well-being.
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04
Stealth · Sonance
Audio & Video
Immerse yourself in sound and visuals that transport you to another world, all while enhancing your wellness and home experience.
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05
Sonance · Coastal Source
Outdoor Living
Landscape lighting, outdoor speakers and TVs, Wi-Fi and cameras for terraces, gardens and pools, run from the same system as the house.
Seamless steps, stellar spaces
Discovery & Definition
At your home or in the showroom. We look at the windows, the walls and how you actually live in the rooms.
You bring: plans if they exist, and the rooms that bother you.
Design Development
A room-by-room scheme with fixture and fabric selections, and a written price before anything is ordered.
You bring: one round of choices — fabrics, keypad finishes.
Documentation & Approval
We write the alteration package, carry the certificate of insurance, and coordinate the electrician before the walls close.
You bring: nothing. This is the part we handle.
Construction & Completion
Scenes tuned on site, then an hour teaching whoever will actually use it. Support does not end at the invoice.
You bring: the people who live there.
Every project is priced from the drawings.
No two homes we have worked in have been alike, and no package would have fitted any of them. Projects have run from a single room to a whole house. What we can tell you is exactly how the number is arrived at, and exactly when it can change.
Design first, price second
We scope from your plans and from how you actually use the rooms — not from a tier sheet. A single bedroom and a full estate get the same method, at different scales.
One written scope
Equipment, programming, labor, board coordination and commissioning in a single document you can read. No allowances that quietly grow, no line items discovered on site.
Nothing ordered until you approve it
Fabrics, finishes and keypad plates are confirmed with you before anything is bought. No equipment is ordered against an assumption.
The price you approve is the price for the scope you approved. If you change your mind about a room, or the building turns up a condition nobody could see on a drawing, we price that change and you approve it before any further work starts. What we will not do is send you an invoice you have not already seen.
A home should not look like it has technology in it. That is the whole brief.
The Autom8 Group · Chelsea, New YorkQuestions we actually get asked.
Do I need my co-op or condo board's approval?
For anything that touches walls, ceilings or the façade, almost always. We write the alteration package and provide a certificate of insurance naming the building and the managing agent. We have done this in most of the major Manhattan buildings, and it rarely delays a project when it is started early.
My apartment is prewar and landmarked. Can this still be done?
Yes, and it is most of what we do. Plaster over terracotta means no chases for new wiring, so we use wire-free shades and RF keypads where required, and plan every route before demolition rather than after.
We have through-wall or PTAC units under the windows. Is that a problem?
It is the detail no drawing shows, and it is routine for us. A shade, a blackout side channel and a heating unit have to share the same eighteen inches of wall without fighting each other. We size the pocket and the channel around the unit rather than discovering the clash on site.
How long does it take?
A single room is usually two to four weeks from order, most of which is fabric and hardware lead time. A whole apartment coordinated with a renovation runs alongside the construction schedule. We give you timeline in writing at proposal, not estimates on the phone.
Do you work with my architect or interior designer?
Most of our projects come to us through one. We work to your drawing set, issue shade-pocket and infrastructure details at design development, and credit the design team by name on anything we publish.
What happens when something stops working in two years?
Because we design, install, and program your systems, we know them inside and out—and we're here to keep them performing at their best. Every installation includes a 6–12 month warranty, depending on the products installed. Beyond the warranty period, we offer multiple tiers of extended service and support programs, tailored to your needs, ensuring your technology continues to operate seamlessly for years to come.
Can you take over a system somebody else installed?
Often, yes. Bring us the panel photos and whatever documentation exists. Many systems from the last decade are approaching end of life and can be upgraded rather than replaced.
Most of this job
is the building.
A board alteration agreement and a certificate of insurance naming the building. An Alt-2 filing. Pre-war partitions with no cavity to fish a wire through. A PTAC sleeve under the sill that decides whether a shade can be inside-mounted at all. An opening half an inch wider at the bottom than the top. The equipment is rarely the hard part.
Most of what goes wrong on these projects is a decision made in the wrong month: a ceiling pocket framed before the shade was chosen, a keypad location picked before anyone checked for a neutral. We would rather be in the drawing set early and quiet than on site late and expensive.
We will do the shading, lighting and automation on your behalf.
Specify with us, or hand the whole scope over. Invite-only events include AIA / IDCEC learning units.
Architects & interior designers
- Showroom demonstration for your client
- Lunch & learn sessions in your studio
- Invite-only events with AIA / IDCEC learning units
- Help specifying lighting, shading and control
- Installation on your behalf
Builders & AV professionals
- Demonstration for your client or your team
- Project specifications written against your drawings
- Installation on your behalf, under your program
Where we are most useful
Early. Shade pockets, keypad locations and circuit separation are cheap decisions at design development and expensive ones after the ceiling closes.
Specifications do not tell you how a room feels.
144 West 18th Street, in Chelsea. Not a wall of sample boards — rooms with the systems running in them, so you can stand in a scene rather than read about one.
Worth an hour if you are choosing a system, a fabric, or a keypad finish you will look at every day for the next decade.
- Watch light changeFull-spectrum tunable white moving across the day, on the same wall, in the same paint.
- Listen to a shadeThe quietest motor in the room is a specification decision. You can hear the difference.
- Hold the keypadsEngraving, finish, button count. The part of the system your hand touches daily.
- See fabric against real glazingOpenness factor, blackout, glare. A swatch on a desk tells you almost nothing.
- Try the interfacesKeypad, app and voice, side by side, before you decide which ones a room needs.
Tell us about the project.
Whether it is one room or a whole house, the first conversation is the same: what the rooms are for, what stage the drawings are at, and what is already decided.
1.866.815.0099 · 144 West 18th Street, Chelsea · About us · FAQs