Lighting hallway with door sensor switch or PIR?

[basill]

Hi I need some advice. I have a ground floor flat and the hallway is pretty dim & dark. More so now that it’s coming into winter. I will be selling the place shortly and want to improve the lighting and mood for the buyer in true Sarah Beany fashion. So I was thinking of having a door sensor or PIR that turns on the hallway lights once the entrance door into the hallway is opened. I guess this would ideally need to be on some sort of timer so that the lights don’t stay on forever especially when you exit. Also it would need to be wired in parallel I presumably so that the existing light switches can still turn on/off the lights.

At the moment there are three lights in the hallway and three separate switches wired in parallel so any one switch will turn on/off the lights. Fortunately there is one switch near to the entrance door so wiring anything to this shouldn’t be much of a problem. I will be replacing the existing 240v lights with 12v recessed downlighters and transformers as well but don’t think this should cause any issue for what I am planning.

So my questions are:

- should I go for a PIR or door sensor? If the latter I am not sure how to get a timer function inbuilt or maybe I should give up on this idea and just rely on people flicking the switch on exit. Be nice though to have some automation built in though

- how does a PIR or door sensor get wired? Into the switched live on the nearest wall switch?

- Does a PIR require its own power source or does it run off batteries?

- The door switches I have seen at TLC seem very deep (up to 38mm deep) and look to be a right pain to fit into a door frame and then run wiring to the light spur. They seem more suited to application in wardrobes and kitchen cupboards. Maybe I am searching for the wrong thing and there are better types that I should be looking at? What about the types of things that are used in alarm systems on windows and doors?

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Is this a hallway as in a part of your flat, linking various rooms, or a communal entrance area?

If the former, what's wrong with switchable lights, like everyone has - how many people do you have to worry about turning them off?

If the latter, should you really be messing with it? Are any of the lights maintained emergency ones? If not, why not?

BTW - those switches are not "in parallel", you need to do a bit of research into 2-way and intermediate switch wiring....