I have only ever used it for toekick lighitng, so the overheads wouldn't have to be turned on for a midnight raid for the icecream. Any other use woud be pretty darn annoying. Even that was annoying, as the sensors are not smart enough to keep it on long enough.

Recently bought a new car and was able to order with exactly what I wanted in it. One of the options was the car could detect hand "gestures" and you could change setting with it. Didn't seem like a great idea, so I skipped the option! I also have a trunk that is supposed to open when you do a kick gesture under the bumper ... haven't gotten that one to work yet!

What happens when you are in the middle of dicing a tomato and someone else makes the gesture that turns your kitchen lights off ... hope you didn't need that finger ... oops!

Not the kitchen, but my brother put them in the guest bath off the mud/laundry room in their last house. Teenaged kids who never seemed to turn off lights and it annoyed him. I hated them. I'd be busy in the bathroom, or seated in the bathroom and the lights would go out. I'd be waving my arms, sometimes cussing, would really have to stand to turn them on again. It was an interior bathroom....no window light at all so very dark with the lighting off.

I've changed all but two outdoors to lights on timers even, that's how much I dislike motion activated.

DH will sometimes cook crab over gas in the driveway in winter. The sensor for the then-motion-activated front of garage light was in front of this office. Every several minutes one night in the snow, I watched a friend come into window view wildly waving his arms to turn the lights back on over the crab cooker. I had it changed to hard wired timer that I can set according to the seasons.

@HU-227031627 what about this appeals to you? I would never spend money on this, not only because of the reasons listed above, but also it seems like something destined to break after a short time.

It does remind me of my old office which had motion-sensor lights in rooms used for meetings. It made sense for those spaces because people would rarely turn lights off when they left a meeting. The sensors were also commercial-grade, so more robustly built. I remember a particularly boring meeting, where one person droned on and on. As everyone was falling asleep, suddenly the room lights turned off. The guy was embarrassed, but I thought it was a better way to show he was long-winded than if any of us interrupted him.

Not remotely interested.

Not trying to do TMI, but I was once in a bathroom at some restaurant and things took long enough awhile that the light went out. I had to feel around by feel to get out of the stall, as the sensor was over the sink area. (my cell phone was in the car.) NO NO NO! Where would you set the sensor? Just don't, and have it engrained to turn off lights by hand whenever you leave a space!

GIven the built-in obsolescence of everything, not the technical obsolescence even, just the idea that everything is made to fall apart and be replaced over and over now, I don't want anything that is not low tech if I can avoid it.

I just put a 67 year old cooktop in my kitchen. It has no electronics, no "technology" at all. You can take most of it apart by hand, and adjust anything that needs to be adjusted with a phillips head screwdriver and the clear, illustrated owner's manual. I wish I could have things like that all over my house.

Sounds like a resounding no from people who know.

I thought it might be useful if your hands were dirty and you didn't want to touch a switch. That idea probably is only valid relative to water faucets. With lighting, people have already turned on the lights when they start their project, unlike when your hands get dirty in the midst of the project and you want to wash them.

Thank you all.

The solution to dirty hands and not wanting to touch a light switch is getting a rocker switch and hitting it with your elbow.

I have a weak immune system and wash my hands first thing when I get home before touching anything. (Hand washing when I get home has quite seriously changed my life and the amount that I get sick.) I don't want to touch a light switch with my dirty hands so I punch it on with my elbow.

Today I was at doctor's appointment and noticed the wheelchair auto door opener has changed from a huge grey metal square to a hand wave sensor. I can imagine that is much easier to use for people with accessibility issues. I also appreciated not having to hit it with my elbow.

We have motion-sensor lights in our kitchen -- they were there when we bought the house. The lights don't turn off after x minutes, so that's good (they *do* turn off in the dining room and in the pantry, which is ANNOYING). But I don't like them at all -- if I'm going into the kitchen early in the morning to grab coffee, I do not want the lights turning on and blinding me. If I could figure out how to get rid of the motion sensor, I would.

ETA: Our two cats never set off the motion sensors in any of the lights. ;)

We have motion-sensored lights in our pantry-laundry, and I LOVE THEM. That's the type of room where you always seem to enter with something in your hands, so it's convenient to have the lights come on automatically (we have only a 12x12 window over by the washer/dryer, and -- obviously -- at night we have no natural light.

I'm not quite sure I'd enjoy this in the kitchen. I have better natural light in there, and pretty frequently someone goes into the kitchen in the evening just for a drink or to use the garbage can ... and we don't necessarily need /want the light on for those small tasks. Our kitchen light reflects onto the TV, so we purposefully leave it off when no one's actively using the kitchen.

I installed Lutron MS-OPS2H motion sensor switches in the kitchen which has non-dimmable lights. I installed Lutron MSCL-OP153MH motion sensor dimmers in hallways which have dimmable LEDs. Both products have light sensors so they don't turn on the controlled lights when there is sufficient daylight. If you're installing one of these in the kitchen -- or any room for that matter -- make sure the switch does not face an adjacent hallway or a mirror that reflects into a hallway, or the light may turn on when you're just passing by.

Morz8, the electrician looked at me like I was strange when I said i didn't want the exterior floodlights to be motion activated! They ordered some that had a plastic plug that can cover the sensor. We live in a safe area, I have dogs that run around the yard and foliage that gets moved by the breeze ... those darned light would be going on/off all night long! No thanks.

I do like to have the floodlights there for emergency use and have them wired to a couple of spots around the house so I can light them all up if there is something unusual going on outside.

I bought these undercabinet lights for my daughter's rental kitchen. You can wave to turn them on, and they stay on until you wave them off. They also have a switch to turn them on and off. They are great for under the cabs, but I agree with those say no to general room lighting that turns off automatically.

BLACK+DECKER 3-Bar LED Under Cabinet Lighting Kit Cool White 3-Pack 9-in Plug-in LED Under Cabinet Light Bar Motion Sensing Light

I don't touch any of my switches with my fingers. I use my elbow like Kendrah or my knuckle. Which is technically a finger part but one that is rarely dirty.

Love this post! I’ve no interest in motion activated lights in my kitchen. My reading of many of the replies describing personal experiences with these lights made me laugh out loud! Thanks for that - I feel much better now! 😁

Great tip on the Black & Decker lights, iroll.

"I remember a particularly boring meeting, where one person droned on and on. As everyone was falling asleep, suddenly the room lights turned off."

I would have so bust out laughing at the guy were I there LOL!!

mxk3 z5b_MI: "suddenly the room lights turned off."

Sounds like the only way the lights would have stayed on is if the motion sensor had been able to sense heartbeats.

Re amusing poor motion sensor design: a relative was an icu fellow when a new hospital opened. ICUs are usually staffed overnight by residents, fellows and attendings on loooooong shifts, so they were all excited about the three very nice, private rooms provided for them right in the center of the unit. No more sprints across the hospital or from another floor from some dark cramped nasty room. Until one night when they actually had some time to get some sleep.....and discovered motion sensor lights had been installed and were sensitive enough to pick up every night time squirm. No rest until that got fixed.

I used to work in a building that had those. If I stayed late at the office (usually to work on a document or presentation), I’d have to wave my hands around every so often or the lights would go out. Very disconcerting.

Many say they don't like motion detected lighting because the lights will turn off when they don't want them to or they don't like them because they switch on when they walk into a room even when they don't want them on. However, I don't belive that is how these Novy lights function. You turn them on and off with a gesture of your hand. They are not on timers. Nor are they activated when you walk into a room.

So what would be the downsides of this particular type of light? That you do want them to turn on when you walk into a room and they don't until you walk up to the light and activate it by moving your hand? That you broke your collarbone and now can't turn on the lights in your kitchen?

There are three Novy lights, Wall, Pendant, and Shelf. There is no traditional under-counter light. The Wall light attaches to the rear wall and is 3" high and 1" deep. The photo on the website DOES NOT show the light attached under a cabinet; the hand of the person gesturing to turn the light on and off has his hand directly under the light. This light is not IMO suitable for installation under a cabinet. The 36" Novy Wall 90 is 749 euro (~$790).

Thank you wdccruise for the advice and for adding a price. So many of these things on the internet are shown without a price.