by Sharon Moryl, Marketing Specialist, Leviton Manufacturing Company
Homebuyers have great expectations when it comes to luxury homes: spacious rooms, vaulted ceilings, spas and swimming pools are standard amenities. But in the custom housing market, as in many other sectors, the small details are as important as the big picture. Careful attention to every element in a home contributes to its overall ambiance. This is apparent in the Bellagio, a model home in Estero, Florida, built by Lyons Housing, an Arthur Rutenberg Homes franchise. Tim Rose, president of Lyons, oversaw the creation of the spacious, approximately 7,000 sq. ft. home. “We didn’t hold back on anything,” said Rose. They filled the home with high-end furnishings and top of the line products from companies such as Sub-Zero and Wolf. Rose wanted the electrical devices to live up to the home’s elegant interior. He found what he was looking for in the new Acenti® Collection by Leviton Manufacturing. The introduction of Acenti in January 2005 and the building of the Bellagio were a fortuitous intersection of innovative design and the perfect venue to show it off.
For Rose, watching the Bellagio take shape was a labor of love. “The Bellagio was one of those exciting-to-build houses that comes along once in a while. It was fun going out to the construction site every day and seeing what happened and how it all came together.” It was during this time that Glenn Kennedy, a Leviton sales representative, brought the Acenti collection of lighting controls, switches, receptacles and wallplates to Rose. His response was instantaneous. “I loved the design. There hasn’t been a new design like that in switching devices for a while. When I saw it, I knew exactly where I would use it,” said Rose.
The innovative Acenti form factor was the culmination of a long design process at 
Leviton. With Acenti, the company wanted to start fresh and re-imagine residential electrical products in light of changing consumer tastes. It sought an alternative to toggle- and rocker-style devices—one that would appeal to the affluent consumer, as well builders, designers, architects and contractors. According to Dennis Oddsen, vice president of engineering at Leviton and an Acenti project leader, “The goal was to create a line of products that would be seen as a design asset — a celebration of form and function. That’s not how designers have traditionally viewed electrical devices.”
The timing was right for an electrical device makeover. With style quotients raised by an overall trend toward luxury and the proliferation of home improvement TV shows and magazines, the market for fine design was growing across the board, especially among the affluent. According to Rose, “The high-end customer has different requirements in style.” They prize form but expect function to be superlative also. The way a door closes smoothly, or the ends of a drawer dovetail are important prerequisites for purchases. It is exactly this type of precision engineering that designers built into Acenti.
Upscale homeowners seeking comfort, style and ease will find what they are looking for in the Bellagio. The model exemplifies the American dream home, with four bedrooms and bathrooms, a leisure room, outdoor kitchen and pool. Recessed ceilings in the living and leisure rooms reach over 14 feet. A sunken wet bar, wine cellar, lanai and spa are among its many comforts. Acenti devices are right at home in this luxurious environment. Acenti’s design platform is clean, uncluttered and set in a contoured wallplate that creates an elegant transition to the wall surface. Switches and lighting controls feature a soothing blue LED, a first in electrical devices. Their push pads work effortlessly, providing crisp actuation and minimum travel, yet have a tactile quality that offers the right amount of feedback to users. Regardless of whether the load is turned on or off, the pads always return to a neutral position, achieving perfect alignment, even in multi-gang applications. To create the perfect mood in various rooms, 600-watt dimmers and matching remotes are liberally distributed throughout the model home. Prospective residents will find the optional dimmer adjustments for minimum brightness level, dim-lock and fade rate easy to use.
Although duplex receptacles are installed in the Bellagio, Acenti is available in an innovative triplex receptacle that provides three outlets and still fits in a standard wallbox. To create the triplex, engineers added an extra outlet to a duplex receptacle and reversed the orientation of the top and bottom outlets so transformers would not block the receptacle. The result is neat and space saving. According to James Sherman, Leviton’s marketing director for residential products, “When we’ve shown this to people, it’s an ‘aha’ moment. But this innovation couldn’t be done with a conventional receptacle design. Acenti’s new geometry made the triplex possible.”
In the kitchen and bathrooms, Acenti GFCI receptacles provide ground fault protection. A patented, advanced technology “dead-face” safety feature cuts power to the receptacle face if the GFCI is improperly wired. The Acenti footprint is more substantial than that of a conventional switch or receptacle, yet the devices are 100% compatible with standard electrical boxes and require no special tools for installation.
Just as the perfect frame enhances fine art, Acenti wallplates bring out the best in the devices. Completely screwless, they snap on and add a smooth, hardware-free finishing touch that blends beautifully with the collection. There are no dividers or frames between devices in multi-gang installations, adding to the uniform look. The wallplates mount directly to the dimmer straps, using an innovative patent-pending multi-function clip that cleverly ensures alignment and provides self-grounding for devices. The visible surfaces of the devices and wallplates installed in the Bellagio are molded in an appealing, lightly textured finish that complements the matte finishes preferred in today’s interiors. The collection also offers the industry’s first screwless wallplate in brushed stainless steel metal. Multimedia wallplate inserts provide voice, data, audio and video connectivity in the home.
The Acenti collection is available in seven designer colors. Although Rose was initially most impressed by the distinctive Acenti form factor, he was pleased with the broad color selection. “For homebuyers, color is an influencing decision factor.” The Acenti palette of Quartz, Sand, Driftwood, Natural, Alabaster, Onyx and Slate exudes upscale elegance in neutral and off-white variations. Rose chose Driftwood, a rich medium taupe, for the Bellagio installation.
Attention to detail has paid off for the Bellagio and Acenti. In Parade of Homes™ 2005, an annual building industry event in southwest Florida, the model won Superior Home awards for Best Interior Design, Best Kitchen, Best Livability and Best Bath, among others. At Leviton, the company is pleased with early response to the Acenti Collection and the industry buzz it has generated.
As builders of luxury housing are well aware, investing in furnishings that will 
capture the hearts, minds, and ultimately, pocketbooks of potential buyers is vital for success. It is equally important for the electrical industry to create products that are as well designed as the homes they illuminate. Everyone wins when a craving for perfection can be carried out from start to finish — from the foundation of the Bellagio by Arthur Rutenberg Homes to the installation of the Acenti collection by Leviton.
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Sharon Moryl is a marketing specialist for Leviton Manufacturing Company.
