Your home's lighting is more than illumination — it’s what makes a space beautiful, useful, and ultimately, livable. At Audio Advice, we think DMF’s industry-leading technology sets the bar for performance, quality, and flexibility. Designed to be completely modular, their intelligent, future-focused lighting solutions will provide incredible lighting in just about any situation.

Headquartered in Los Angeles, California, DMF takes a creative approach to their lighting. With modularity at the core of their designs, they create sophisticated lighting systems inside of their own in-house R&D facility — and this is one of the reasons DMF can give you the best lighting experience in almost any environment with exceptional aesthetics that are also easy to adapt.

DMF LED downlights are efficient, they consume less power, and yet they provide the most accurate color renderings we have ever seen with incredibly smooth dimming. These LEDs will enhance how your room looks and feels without sacrificing energy efficiency or compromising on the aesthetics of your room.

DMF High-Performance Lighting Solutions

Let’s look at the comparison of a DMF fixture vs. a traditional 6” contractor fixture. Most LED bulbs that you buy at Lowes or Home Depot are produced at the lowest cost possible versus a high-end fixture, which uses better LEDs and drivers. The driver is the brain behind an LED. It converts the 120 volts AC to a low voltage current for the LED. The driver in LED bulbs is the smallest and cheapest thing they could put into the bulb, which leads to bulbs flickering, buzzing, and not dimming well. The driver in the top-of-the-line DMF, which is called DID, is incredible technology and with the heavy-duty heat sinks, they not only can hit high lumens accurately, they are guaranteed for 50,000 hours and come with a 10-year warranty.

You’ll notice that premium fixtures like DMF are all one combined fixture with no gap, versus inexpensive fixtures that come in multiple pieces. As you might imagine, for new homes, we can go smaller than 6” retrofit trims in both square and round. We also have the ability to design the lighting layout in conjunction with the control system so that we can layer lights to have some areas bright and others dim for each scene. Here are a couple of images from an install we did where you can see the full lighting layers using a mixture of task, specialty, and indirect lighting.

In this showcase, we illustrate the result of changing out traditional builder-grade canned lights with high-performance DMF fixtures. We will show you before photos as we go along so you can see how much better the light is just by implementing good design techniques in terms of color temperature, intensity levels, and using aimable lights. In new homes, we are able to make it even better because we can design multiple lighting layers and set locations versus just replacing the current fixtures.

Kitchen Lighting Upgrades

Even with the best LEDs from Lowes, we often see kitchens with flickering bulbs, dead bulbs, and a host of mismatching color temperatures as bulbs are replaced. Even bulbs bought at the same time will have slightly different variances.

With new DMF fixtures, we are able to maintain the color temperature at 2700 kelvin but we increased the light intensity level from 650 lumens per fixture to 1000. You can see how much this increased the light in the kitchen, making cooking, homework, and everything else easier and safer. There is no flickering and every light has exactly the same color temperature. Obviously, these higher-end fixtures don’t have separate bulbs and are more aesthetically pleasing.

Upgraded Kitchen LED Lighting: Before & After

Living Room Lighting Upgrades

We had two goals to achieve in the living room. First, we wanted to increase the total lumen level given how deep the coffered ceiling is, so we also went with 1000 lumen lights. Second, the original layout had all lights pointing straight down. We’ve now controlled the light dispersion in the room and used aimable lights in the front to really highlight the bookshelves.

Upgraded Living Room LED Lighting: Before & After

Master Bedroom Lighting Upgrades

In master bedrooms, we really want to set up environments that are conducive to a good night’s sleep. Most people know you want to avoid blue light before sleep to help your circadian rhythm, but we also have the opportunity to aim lights and set dim levels to improve sleep as well.

We’ve programmed multiple scenes combining dim levels and electronic shades to leverage sunshine during the day and set the stage for sleeping at night. If you take a look at these two reading lights, they previously utilized regular LEDs that spread light all over the bed. We replaced the lights with narrow beam spread aimable fixtures that turn on and off slowly so that one person can now read in bed without disturbing the other.

Upgraded Bedroom Lighting: Before & After

Office Lighting Upgrades

First, we used warm dim lights in the office — they are at 3000 kelvin when fully on, which is ideal for a work environment like an office, however, this room is also used in the evenings for listening to music and winding down. As the lights are dimmed, they slowly transition from 3000 kelvin down to under 2000 kelvin, which is ideal for relaxing. The room has incredible cherry wood paneling that just pops with the super high color rendering index of these DMF fixtures. If you are not familiar with the color rendering index, it is the measurement of how closely an electric light can accurately render all colors in comparison to when it is rendered by daylight. Most LEDs that you buy at the store measure around 85 out of 100, but these DMF lights are all 93 and up - and you can clearly see the improvement made in the room. We also used black fixtures that match the black accents and lighting keypads in the room to improve the overall aesthetic.

Upgraded Office Lighting: Before & After

Home Theater Lighting Upgrades

This theater room has amazing design and aesthetics, and with these lively artwork-covered acoustic panels, we wanted to improve the color rendering to see all the individual colors in the prints. We updated the lighting to use aimable fixtures to place the light where it needs to go to really set the mood for this space.

You’ll notice that we used super narrow beam spreads on the art and cabinets in the front so that light does not bleed onto the theater screen. The traditional lights in this room simply could not dim low enough without flickering or eventually burning out.

Like the office, we used warm dim fixtures so that the room is fully lit up for super bowl parties and social gatherings, but can be dimmed down for television watching, and then way down for movies.

The original lights all had white trims, so we custom painted the DMF fixtures and used matching custom paint on all of the speakers and HVAC vents as well. This not only looks better but also has the added benefit of fewer reflections and glare on the screen. Lighting design has such a big impact on home theaters that we’ve written a full article & created a video specifically on lighting design for home theaters.

The original LEDs in the front of the theater had been removed because they threw too much light on the screen, so when we updated this room, we used a combined narrow beam spread light with a specialty trim that blocks the light on the screen side. We’ve also updated the bar area to allow guests to pour their drinks and get snacks without it having an impact on the screen.

Before Home Theater LED Lighting Upgrades

After Home Theater LED Lighting Upgrades

Artwork Lighting Upgrades

For those who have invested in paintings or family pictures, having high-quality lighting is crucial — check out the photos below. Using a cross-lighting technique with a moderate beam spread that lights both the painting and the family photos makes a huge visual impact. With a higher quality light, we are able to pick up on the texture of the paint itself and it looks just like it did in the art gallery.

Upgraded LED Lighting: Before & After

Wine Cellar Lighting Upgrades

This wine room is our favorite lighting makeover in the whole house. You could hardly see the wine bottles previously, and once we installed the high-performance fixtures with the right lumens, color temperature, and beam spread, we aimed them to showcase the wine.

Wine Cellar Lighting Upgrades: Before & After

At Audio Advice, we've designed, configured, and installed more smart home automation systems than anyone in the Southeast. As our customers in Raleigh, Charlotte, and surrounding areas can attest, our experience has enabled us to evaluate and curate the products, platforms, and combinations that perform best together to create a fully integrated smart home. With over 40,000 customers, 40 years of experience, and unmatched customer service, we have become the standard in the Southeast for smart homes.