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Design Pilgrimage: Visiting Ekinex in Northern Italy
Inside MKIJuly 2026·7 min read

Design Pilgrimage: Visiting Ekinex in Northern Italy

In Piedmont’s lake country, Italy’s most beautiful KNX keypads are designed and made. We went to see how — and toured villas where they live on marble, silk and stone.

MK

— Editorial Team

Smart home, luxury property & intelligent living insight from the MK Iconic team

There is engineering, and then there is Italian engineering. Ekinex designs and manufactures what we consider the most beautiful KNX keypads and controls in the world — and they do it in Piedmont, Italy's lake country. This summer we made the trip to see the operation first-hand and, more importantly, to walk the reference installations in the villas above the water.

Lake Orta shoreline in Piedmont, northern Italy, near Ekinex
Piedmont’s lake country — the landscape Ekinex calls home.

The One Thing a Guest Actually Touches

In a luxury lighting design, almost everything we install is meant to disappear. The keypad is the exception — it is the single piece of technology a guest actually reaches out and touches. It therefore has to feel inevitable against the interior it sits on: on marble, on silk wallpaper, on lacquered joinery. Get it wrong and it reads as a gadget bolted to a beautiful wall. Get it right and it reads as part of the architecture.

Ekinex keypad mounted cleanly above dark skirting on a plastered wall
The detail that matters: a keypad sitting flush and quiet against the wall it serves.

This is where Ekinex separates itself. Their plates are machined from real materials — metal, glass, stone-effect and painted finishes — with a restraint an interior designer can specify without flinching. And underneath the finish sits KNX, the same open, wired standard we engineer across our climate and lighting estates. Beauty on the surface; a professional, decades-durable protocol beneath it.

Ekinex keypad mounted flush on a marble wall
Machined plates on real stone — control hardware an interior designer can sign off.
Ekinex keypad set against botanical silk wallpaper
Against silk botanical wallpaper — the control as an interior detail, not an interruption.

Inside the Reference Villas

The most valuable part of any factory visit is never the factory — it is the installed work. We toured private residences where Ekinex hardware sits flush against stone, glass and bespoke joinery: sweeping staircases governed by a single glass touch-panel, dark feature walls where the control all but dissolves, garden estates where the system reaches out to the terraces above the lake.

Spiral staircase beneath a cascading chandelier in an Ekinex reference villa
A reference villa: the sweeping staircase beneath a cascading chandelier, on one glass panel.
Ekinex glass touch-panel beside an ornate staircase balustrade
Where the control meets the architecture — a glass panel beside the balustrade.
Ekinex glass touch panel mounted on a dark feature wall
On a dark feature wall, the panel reads as surface, not device.
Formal topiary gardens above Lake Orta at an Ekinex reference estate
Reference territory — the formal gardens of a lakeside estate.

The Engineering Underneath

Behind every one of those finishes is a properly engineered KNX backbone: the distribution racks, actuators and bus wiring that let a whole-estate system run reliably for decades rather than months. It is the same architecture we build into our own KNX estate projects in the UK — the unglamorous discipline that makes the glamorous part dependable.

KNX distribution rack cabinet in an Ekinex reference installation
The part guests never see: a full KNX distribution cabinet, dressed and labelled.

Bringing It Home

Ekinex controls are now part of our specification palette for clients who want the control hardware to belong to the interior rather than interrupt it. If that is the standard you are working to, book a design consultation — and ask to see the Italian samples in person.

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