Photos: Aurora One Lighting and Admit One Home Services
What if we view light the way we view paint and interior design? What if it is more than just flipping a switch? Inside Aurora One Lighting’s west Edina showroom, a sleek touchscreen set above an elegant silver panel invites visitors to choose from modes like “Energize,” “Entertain,” “Relax,” and more. These keypads are the gateway to a technology—integrated with audiovisual systems—that allows homeowners to adjust light levels, music and other elements from a single interface. While the setup may evoke the futuristic feel of a Star Trek spacecraft, the goal is practical rather than theatrical: to show how lighting can influence mood, support one’s daily routine and tie together different systems within a home.
“It’s not just lighting,” says Jessica Betzold, client experience and marketing manager for Aurora One Lighting and its sister company, Admit One Home Systems. “It’s integrated with AV [audiovisual]. It can turn the TV on, it can play music, it can play music at a certain level. It can turn on a certain station. One button can trigger an entire scene.”
Aurora One specializes in architectural lighting, as showcased in these illuminated bookshelves. The fixture, selected by an interior designer, is part of a thoughtfully integrated lighting plan. Aurora One collaborates closely with designers and architects to seamlessly incorporate lighting into the overall design of the home.
Those scenes are programmed into custom keypads throughout the home. Rather than controlling a single fixture, each button activates a series of actions—lighting levels, music and even window shades. All designed for how homeowners actually live.
For Joe Branchaw, Aurora One’s lighting specialist, the goal of lighting design is emotional. “What we’re trying to do with lighting is evoke a feeling,” Branchaw says. “Do you want to be energized? We can use brighter, more intense light. Want to relax? We dim it down. Candlelit dinner, we can control that, too.”
Branchaw says lighting is often an afterthought in home design, but it has a profound impact. “You don’t know bad lighting until you see it. Once you see it, you know it,” he says. Light can become an element that adds depth and warmth, much like how an interior designer can use throw pillows and artwork to add color and visual texture to a room. “We use light to enhance your day-to-day experience. It’s the one thing you touch every single day,” he says.
A backlit mountain silhouette brings sculptural dimension to this sauna, demonstrating how architectural lighting can enhance a room’s sense of warmth and retreat.
Meaningful lighting improvement doesn’t require major construction. “A lot of it is changing the light source and the control,” Branchaw says. “Swap out the dimmer, update the inside of the fixture and it completely changes how the room feels. You don’t have to tear open drywall.”
For new builds and even any renovation project, Aurora One emphasizes collaboration, not competition. Owner Kristen Reinitz is a certified lighting designer, while Branchaw has almost 25 years experience as an electrical engineer. “We do a lot of the lighting design ourselves, and when it comes to decorative pendants, like the artwork and over the dining room table, we work with the interior designers on where they want the pendants placed. They select all that. We do the rest. We are typically hand in hand with the interior designers and builders and the homeowner on the layout and how everything is going to look in the end,” Branchaw says. “We work alongside electricians, AV contractors, interior designers and builders. If a homeowner already has an AV team, we coordinate with them.”
Discreet baseboard lighting is a sophisticated way to illuminate a bathroom, providing guidance and ambiance during nighttime hours.
Ideally, Betzold and Branchaw say it’s best if they’re brought in early on in the process. “The best thing is to get in with the architects because then we can manipulate where the trusses are placed so that the lighting gets placed in the right spot … If we get in early enough, we can help manipulate the trusses,” Branchaw says.
Betzold says the company is leaning heavily into education. “That’s something we are really trying to teach and get out into the industry and let architects know. It’s such a more seamless process and end result when we can get in earlier,” she says. Branchaw agrees. “The architects who understand it, use it a lot. We are still trying to educate a lot of people about how to get in early enough. Lighting is the one piece that you use on a daily basis.”
Aurora One Lighting and Admit One Home Services
Instagram: @auroraonelighting
