Having a smart house is easily within reach these days. Practically every aspect of the home can be enhanced with smart gadgets to make tasks more convenient for you. These gadgets also use energy more efficiently, enabling you to save on your monthly bills and to recoup your initial investment within a short period. Energy Star provides a Smart Home Energy Management Systems (SHEMS) certification for home systems that meet its specifications for both convenience and energy cost savings. A smart home need not look like a laboratory, though. Far from it, a smart home can be designed to reflect the occupants’ personalities and aesthetics using the same technology.
Technology and Art
Digital photo frames these days come in a variety of sizes, styles, and colors to match any interior design scheme. Some can even mimic wood frames or ornate gilded frames. They can be grouped on mantles and side tables. They can be hung on walls as a gallery of the same frame sizes or as an eclectic grouping of different sizes and orientations. You can also hang a single large frame as the focal point on a wall.
The advantage of a digital frame is that you can upload many photos and change the display whenever you want or set them to change at specified intervals. You will never get tired of what you see on the frame.
The best way to make a house feel like home is to have family photographs in various rooms. You do not need to be a professional photographer to make display-worthy photographs on digital frames. You can choose from what you already have or take new photos, focusing on the expressions on the faces of family members. Everything else in the photo can be fixed. Simply send the photos to professional services that offer photo editing for newborns, children, and families. They can remove unwanted objects and do many other magical changes to make every photograph a masterpiece.
You can also intersperse family photos with photos from your travels. Landscapes in large digital frames can open up a room and bring in the freshness of nature while preserving those happy memories. If your snapshots need tweaking, you may send these for professional digital enhancement, as well.
Creative Lighting
Lighting does wonders in setting the atmosphere in the home. Bulbs that mimic daylight are best for the home office. These have just the right brightness to keep you alert. Daylight indoors also keeps your mood upbeat even if the sky is outside is actually downcast.
After work, warmer lighting makes the home more relaxing. It keeps pace with the waning of the day and signals the body to wind down in preparation for a good night’s sleep. The human body’s circadian rhythm that controls our sleeping patterns is based on the natural cycle of night and day but is also affected by artificial light. It is, therefore, essential to keep the home’s lighting in sync with the natural pattern of night and day.
With connected smart lighting, you can set each room’s lights to automatically shift from daylight to warm light at certain times. You can also install energy-saving sensors that automatically turn off the light when they detect that there is no person in the room.
Creative lighting can be used outdoors to show your home at its best at night. You can also install motion sensors that will automatically turn on outdoor security lights in areas where there is movement.
Integrated Smart Home Systems
If you want to have all your home gadgets to be interconnected, it is best to have all of them from the same platform. You can choose from Google Assistant, Apple HomeKit, or Amazon Alexa. You may not be able to connect all the devices from different platforms with each other. It is best to check compatibility first.
One of the most energy-saving gadgets you must install is a smart thermostat. Get one that adjusts to the weather so that when it is not too cold, it need not use as much energy to heat up rooms. Sensors can also shut down the heater in unused rooms or adjust the temperature depending on the number of occupants in a room. The same principle can be used for air conditioners in the summer.
You need only one controller for all your digital home gadgets in an integrated system, including your home security system. You can check on your interior and exterior home cameras even while you are away. If you have a smart refrigerator, you can connect this, as well, and check on its contents through your smartphone if you make an unscheduled stop at the supermarket.
Having a smart home that you design according to your preferences makes life easier, more cost-effective, safer, and more pleasurable. Technology is no longer impersonal because these days, you can personalize your smart home as you want it.