Victoria’s residential market is unusual. Heritage homes in Oak Bay and Rockland sit alongside contemporary architectural builds in North Saanich, Cordova Bay, and along Beach Drive. The technology brief on each is different — but the principle is the same. A real smart home is one platform, one user interface, one accountable team. Not a stack of apps.
Greater Victoria: where most projects fall
Wenner runs Greater Victoria projects out of the Hillside Avenue Experience Centre. The catchment we work in continuously:
- Oak Bay — Uplands, Estevan Village, Willows, South Oak Bay. A mix of heritage retrofits and new custom builds along Beach Drive.
- Saanich — Cordova Bay, Broadmead, Cadboro Bay, Royal Oak, Gordon Head. The waterfront properties and the larger inland acreages drive most of the integration scope.
- Sidney & North Saanich — Deep Cove, Ardmore, Curteis Point. The peninsula’s waterfront acreages bring long power runs, exterior systems, and considered finish work.
- Metchosin & the West Shore — William Head, Albert Head. Rural, often off-grid-adjacent, with serious generator and solar scope.
The Hillside centre also serves the Cowichan Valley, Salt Spring Island, Pender Island, and the rest of the southern Gulf Islands.
What to specify in a Victoria home
The disciplines that benefit most from being designed in early — at schematic, alongside the architect and interior designer:
- Architectural lighting — layered ambient/task/accent/decorative, on a Lutron HomeWorks or Crestron platform. Keypads engraved to match the metal palette. Scene programming so the homeowner has one button for “Dinner” instead of fifteen dimmers.
- Motorised shading and drapery — Lutron Palladiom hardware, fabric coordinated with the interior designer, side channels and headers detailed by the architect. The Saanich Peninsula’s waterfront orientation makes solar control non-negotiable.
- Audio and video integration — distributed audio across the home, dedicated theatres, listening rooms. Speakers behind plaster. The room’s silhouette stays uninterrupted.
- Climate integration — your mechanical contractor’s HVAC, brought into the Crestron or Lutron platform with smart zoning and scene-driven setpoints.
- Security, surveillance and access — integrated into the same platform alongside lighting, AV and climate. Monitoring is dispatched by a local Canadian ULC-listed station.
Heritage Oak Bay homes — the retrofit conversation
A meaningful share of our Victoria projects are heritage homes — Uplands, Rockland, the older streets around Beach Drive — where the technology has to be designed in around the existing architecture. The conversation looks different from a new build:
- Lutron RadioRA 3 is the workhorse for retrofits where pulling new wire to every fixture isn’t realistic. Wireless dimmers, wireless keypads, and a hub that ties them together. Less programming depth than HomeWorks, but a fraction of the install scope.
- Network and audio-video can be retrofitted with surface-mount conduit and careful millwork integration — we coordinate with the cabinet maker so the equipment closet gets a designed home.
- Heritage exteriors restrict where you can place exterior lighting fixtures, cameras, and antennas. The plan respects the streetscape.
When to bring an integrator in
As early as possible — ideally at schematic design. The drawings need to reflect the technology before framing begins. Joining the project at design development still works. Joining at framing or rough-in is workable but compromises the elegance of how the technology disappears into the architecture.
For Greater Victoria projects we recommend a one-hour visit to the Hillside Avenue Experience Centre with the architect, the interior designer, the builder, and the homeowner. It’s the fastest way to align the team on what the technology scope can be.
What it costs
A whole-home Crestron or Lutron HomeWorks system in a luxury Victoria custom build typically lands between $80,000 and $400,000+ for the technology scope, depending on home size, system depth, and how much of the lighting, audio-video, shading, climate and security scope sits on the platform. The technology budget is usually 4–8% of the home’s overall construction cost.
Wenner produces three Design Packages — Foundation, Premier, and Estate — sized to project complexity. The package drives the budget conversation rather than a parts list.
Next step
Book a Centre Visit at the Hillside Avenue Experience Centre. We’ll set aside an hour, dim the room, and walk through what’s possible — with no obligation to do anything next.