Sometimes you don't need a quote — you need straight answers. Sonor offers independent smart home consultancy for homeowners, architects and developers across Cheshire and North Wales. We tell you what you need, not what's most profitable to sell.
A good smart home consultant saves you money in three ways: stopping you over-buying technology you don't need, catching the design mistakes that cost five figures to fix at second-fix, and choosing the control platform that you'll still be happy with in ten years. We've done this for 500+ projects since 2003, and the conversation usually starts the same way: what does the house need to feel like to live in, and what's the budget envelope?
The rest is technical — and that's our job. Cabling routes. Riser positions. Where the network cabinet sits. Which lighting protocol to specify. Whether Control4, Crestron, Savant or Apple Home is the right backbone. Whether the budget runs to a dedicated cinema room or a stealth setup in the lounge. We translate everything back into plain English so the decisions stay yours.
You're at concept or planning stage with an architect. You want to know what to design in now to avoid retrofit pain later. We attend a design meeting — usually no fee — and produce a high-level scope.
You're living in the house and the systems aren't working the way you imagined. We diagnose what's possible, what's worth the cost, and what to leave alone.
You bought a home with an installed Crestron, Control4 or Lutron system that you can't make sense of. We audit, document, retrain — and recommend the path forward.
You've got a quote and you want it sanity-checked. We'll tell you what's right, what's missing, and what's overpriced. Honest and direct.
You're buying a home with significant AV/automation already in place. We assess what works, what's at end-of-life, and what it'd cost to bring up to standard.
An installation has gone wrong — handover delayed, system doesn't behave as promised, original installer not responding. We diagnose, document and finish the job properly. See system rescue.
We don't push products you don't need. We don't tell you the most expensive option is the best — sometimes it is, often it isn't. We don't lock you into proprietary systems if a simpler open-protocol solution does the job. And we don't take undisclosed kickbacks from manufacturers; the brands we recommend are the brands we'd install in our own homes.
If you're an architect, interior designer or developer looking for a technical adviser on a Cheshire residential project, that early conversation is usually the most cost-effective stage of the build — both for your client's budget and for your sanity.