Lighting planning in kitchen, living room, and dining room + smart home technology

Hello everyone,

we are currently working on the lighting planning and smart home equipment for our single-family house.

Lighting planning
We have a large kitchen, living, and dining area that should be illuminated accordingly depending on the use.
The first step involves planning spots to be drilled into the filament concrete ceiling.
The planning mainly comes from our lighting planner, but we would also like to get the forum's opinion.

The lamps should not all be on at the same time but switched on and off or dimmed via several switching groups - depending on the use.
In the attached document, the planned spots (red circles), the wiring (green lines + boxes with numbers), and the switches (red boxes with numbers) are marked.

The staircase lighting is still missing; according to our lighting planner, it will be planned and decided in the shell construction phase.

What do you think about the planning? Does it fit the floor plan? Are there perhaps too many spots? Where could floor and side lamps be placed?


Smart Home
To be able to switch the lamps as flexibly as possible, we want to wire them in a star topology with 5-core cables and equip them with Casambi (Dali) modules. This way, we can also switch the lamps where no switches are available, program scenes, and dim them better than with a phase-cut control.
My husband and I are not passionate tinkerers/programmers, so we think that with this solution the lamps will have the flexibility of a smart home system without including functions that we ultimately won't use.
With the 5-core star wiring, we can also add further lights to the system later by installing Casambi modules.

The roller shutters are connected via KNX and can be switched at central points via switches.

What do you think about the planned approach? Should we also connect the Dali/Casambi lamps to the KNX system? To my understanding, this would require additional centralized wiring.

Thanks and best regards!

The first thing that comes to mind is the countertop in the kitchen above plan 3 c... how is that illuminated?

I immediately notice the countertop in the kitchen above plan 3 c ... how is it going to be illuminated?

Good point! Wall cabinets will be installed here. Lamps will be mounted underneath them to illuminate the countertop.

The venetian blinds are connected via and can be controlled at central points via switches. What do you think about the proposed approach? Should we also connect the Dali/Casambi lamps to the KNX system? Then, as I understand it, additional central wiring would be necessary.

Why do you separate that? Possibly the venetian blinds can be integrated into Casambi (I don't know the system). Separating them doesn't make much sense in any case, unless you stick exclusively to shading control using only touch sensors without visualization.

In order to switch the lamps as flexibly as possible, we want to wire them in a star topology with 5-core cables and equip them with Casambi (Dali) modules. This way, we can also switch the lamps where no switches are available, program scenes, and dim them better than with a phase-cut control. My husband and I are both not passionate tinkerers/programmers, so we think that with this solution, the lamps will have the flexibility of a smart home system but without functions that we ultimately do not use. With the 5-core, star-shaped wiring, we can also subsequently add more lights to the system by installing Casambi modules. What do you think of the proposed approach? Should we also connect the Dali/Casambi lamps to the KNX system? Then, as I understand it, an additional central wiring would be necessary.

A star topology would be possible for DALI but basically rather wasteful because it is a bus system. In other words, you can also wire in a line topology and still control each participant individually.

For flexible control, star topology is of course sensible; then you can decide "lamp-specific" whether to equip it switched without control, switched by KNX, dimmed by KNX, or DALI capable.

If the control is to be done via KNX switches/touch displays, then of course you have to couple DALI and KNX. But one gateway in the control cabinet is sufficient for this; no additional wiring is necessary.

However, you must make the decision soon because there is, of course, also the option to do everything via DALI (pushbuttons, touch panels, sensors), but then it must be wired for DALI.

I would definitely do the operation and sensors via KNX and leave DALI only for lighting.

Hello, I still have something similar unresolved on my end. KNX is set. I have 5x 1.5 (more in the living room) cables in the ceiling and of course it is unclear whether DALI is necessary. There are also somewhat higher costs, more effort in case of defects, a gateway is needed.

But I am also concerned about the lighting itself. I am a huge fan of dimming, also time-dependent. I don't like lamps that dazzle me, meaning spots are not so nice for me. I would like to implement a lot with LED light strips. Does that make sense or am I missing something? Power consumption would be an issue.
And is DALI simply a MUST here or can I still do that with a KNX dimmer?

In the picture, the yellow lines would be LED strips. Along the wall it would be indirect, in the kitchen unit and in the bathroom direct.