Basalte switches, keypads and touch displays
Basalte designs and handcrafts its products in-house in Merelbeke-Melle, Belgium, and takes its name from basalt, the volcanic rock. The range has grown from a single switch into a family of controls:
- Keypads: Sentido, a touch-sensitive switch with two or four zones; Fibonacci, shaped around the golden ratio, with backlit laser-engraved labels; Matisse, a design keypad named after the painter; and Chopin, worked by levers pushed up or down.
- Touch displays: Lisa in a keypad-sized format, Ellie at 5.5 inches and Lena at 10.1 inches, all for Basalte's own Basalte Home system.
- Climate and sensing: the Deseo touch thermostat, and Auro, a flush motion sensor that also works as a night light.
- Door entry: Adelante, a modular door phone with a 5.5-inch OLED screen and options such as a camera, badge reader and fingerprint reader.
Finishes run from brushed black, aluminium, nickel and brass to bronze, rosé and the textured fer forgé range in gunmetal, grey, bronze and rosé.
Why architects and owners specify Basalte keypads
Basalte is chosen for the way a switch looks and feels. Sentido has no visible buttons: the whole plate is touch-sensitive, split into two or four zones, and touching more than one zone at once can switch off every light in the room. Fibonacci's labels light up as you come near, and its icons and text can be changed to suit each room.
That matters most to architects and interior designers, whom Basalte says it works with closely. The company reports more than 60 international design awards, among them iF, Red Dot and Henry van de Velde. A run of matching metal plates in the same finish as the door furniture can either recede into a scheme or become part of it.
There is more behind the plate than a switch. Sentido includes a temperature sensor with thermostat logic and a multicolour LED, so one keypad can show a status colour and read the room temperature as well as run lighting scenes.
Planning Basalte switches for a UK house
- Back boxes. Basalte specifies a 1-gang EU wall box for Sentido, while UK walls normally take square British boxes. Settle the box type with the electrician and Basalte at first fix rather than discovering it when the plates arrive.
- Older walls. Lath and plaster or solid stone can make new boxes awkward, which is worth knowing early in a listed building; our period and listed homes guide covers wall construction.
- Two zones or four. Four zones suit a room with several scenes; two keep a hallway or cloakroom simple. Multi-touch works best if it means the same thing, such as all off, in every room.
- One climate control per room. Because Sentido carries a temperature sensor, decide early whether it or a Deseo runs each room's heating, so walls do not collect extra plates.
- Record the finishes. Note the finish and layout of every plate in the specification, so a later extension or replacement matches.
- Scenes first. A keypad is only as good as the scenes behind it. Settle them with the lighting scene planning guide before labels and engraving are ordered.
