October 16, 2025
NYControlled Grows With Purpose and Precision
Hands-on workshops and curated exhibits deepen industry engagement
In a city where the lights never sleep, the people who make them behave gathered on a bright Wednesday at the Metropolitan Pavilion. NYControlled 2025 — New York’s only trade show dedicated entirely to lighting controls — drew a crowd that was focused, precise, and, by all accounts, growing. Attendance reportedly outpaced last year’s 700-plus, a modest but meaningful metric for an event built on specificity, not spectacle.
Lighting people are famous for looking up. Controls people look sideways. They scan the walls for scene controllers, notice the network bridge no one else sees, and wonder whether the daylight sensor is open-loop or closed-loop. Controls people are wired differently — and that’s the point. NYControlled exists for those who think in voltage drops, BACnet/IP handshakes, and mesh topology maps.
Now in its third year, the event is co-presented by the Illuminating Engineering Society’s New York City Section (IESNYC) and the Designers Lighting Forum of New York (DLFNY) — two organizations that have found a rhythm in curating a show that feels both technical and human-scale. The floor wasn’t packed wall-to-wall, but that wasn’t the goal. Instead, it was dense with conversations about Bluetooth mesh commissioning, daylight harvesting calibration, and the quiet war between wired and wireless architectures.
Evolving Format, Steady Focus
Co-chairs Nehal Youssef of Diversified and Jennifer Mason of QTL describe the event as a living organism — evolving, not exploding.
“From an attendance perspective, we just want to keep growing,” Youssef said. “We added some new concepts this year. The hands-on workshop the day before was sold out — thirty people plus a waitlist — and that engagement really carried into today.”
That hands-on program, priced at $300 and featuring live setups of room-based and multi-zone control networks, marked a shift in tone for the show. It appealed to early-career specifiers and integrators eager to fine-tune commissioning skills — linking sensors, programming schedules, and integrating plug-load relays in real time.
The exhibition day itself ran from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., a full two-hour head start on last year’s schedule — a change that Youssef said “paid off.” Exhibitors were ready, conversations were deeper, and attendees stayed longer.
Mason noted that exhibitor selection remains deliberate: “We open it to controls manufacturers, integrators, and now inverter and service providers — but only if the products are specifiable and viable for the U.S. market.” It’s not just about hardware; integration is a component of design.
A Market in Motion
The timing of NYControlled also aligned with shifting representation among major controls brands in New York City. Several large manufacturers had recently re-aligned agency partnerships, giving this year’s show a quiet sense of introduction — new teams, new alliances, and an eager reset of marketplace relationships.
Attendee Raj Lodaya of Ark Systems Corp. summed up the mood: “There’s so much new technology out there. The difference from five years ago to today is huge. Staying current is really important.”
On the show floor, that difference was tangible. Exhibitors showcased hybrid wired-wireless architectures, IP-based network lighting control systems, and IoT-enabled dashboards streaming occupancy and energy data in real time. Conversations drifted from the elegance of scene-select wall stations to the policy implications of OpenADR demand-response protocols — the sort of topics that might glaze eyes elsewhere but animated the Pavilion’s aisles.
A Show That Knows Its Scale
Mason and Youssef say there’s still physical room to expand, but not without purpose. “We take a lot of time looking at the floor plan,” Mason said. “We want it to feel full, not crowded. It’s about the right density of people who actually do the work.”
That density matters. Lighting controls are no longer just about dimming — they’re about data, networks, and integration with building automation systems. NYControlled reflects that transition without losing touch with the tactile realities of design, installation and commissioning.
It’s unlikely to be a show of several of thousands, but it doesn’t need to be. Lighting controls were never about the crowd; they’re about connection — node to node, system to system, person to person. At NYControlled 2025, those connections pulsed softly through the Pavilion aisles.
