Everyone wants a home that helps them keep up with chores, improve health, and save money. And many smart home features do just that! But many homeowners aren’t using the time- and money-saving tech available simply because they can’t keep up with all the new features.
Smart lighting is a particularly powerful part of your smart home. Your home’s lighting subtly affects the mood, health, and cost of running your home. So it’s essential to take inventory of your current home lighting– then optimize for your family’s unique needs.
We’ve created this post to help you get the most out of smart lighting! Smart lighting saves you time and money while making your home safer and more enjoyable. We’ll walk you through five surprising ways smart lighting impacts your home, so you know exactly how to upgrade your smart home.
1. Access Your Lights from Anywhere
Using smart lights will integrate into your smart home assistant apps. While AI and voice activation are great tools, you can have much greater control of your lights from the app. For example, if you’re away from home, you can tell which bulbs are on and control them from your phone.
Sick of getting comfortable on the couch only to realize you forgot to turn on the light? Already upstairs and remember that the living room lamp is still on?
Your smart home assistant becomes your new “clapper” switch with a much wider range of accessibility. Simply tell Alexa or Google Home to turn off or on the light bulb by name (you can custom program the name of each of your lights by location or phrase). You can also change the temperature or color of your bulbs from your phone, so you can customize your lights without getting up.
2. Automate Home Habits with AI Smart Assistants
Smart lighting works with your home assistant’s AI to learn your family’s needs and schedule. That means Alexa can automatically turn on lights at your usual time to come home. Likewise, Google Home can dim the lights at night to help you and your kids get ready to rest.
Your home assistant is designed to ask you if you’d like its help with the lights and will automatically learn your habits based on the information from the software in your smart lighting accessories. Not only do these features help your home come alive to meet your unique needs, but they can also save you money on your electricity bill.
3. Increase Home Security through Automation
Many people worry about home security while away on vacations or extended work trips. But, unfortunately, it’s easy for criminals to case out homes that are dark day and night for a week or two and assume that you aren’t home.
Smart lights can continue their habits while you are gone, or you can customize them to turn on in new patterns while you are away. This added layer of protection will keep your home from sticking out as an easy target.
4. Highly Customizable Lighting
Smart lighting can be adjusted and customized in so many different ways. For example, the same smart bulb over a kitchen table can be bright for homework, dim for an intimate dinner, or green for a birthday party. And this level of customization is more than just a fancy party trick– the quality of lighting in your home has a massive impact on how you feel while you’re there.
Being able to change the lights to match your mood is an incredible tool previous generations could never have imagined!
Bias Lighting
You can also use smart lighting to reduce the strain on your eyes. For example, adding LEDs to the back of your TV or computer screen can give your eyes a break by creating bias lighting.
Bias Lighting helps to diffuse the color and brightness, so gaming and movie nights are easier on your eyes. Bias lighting also improves the visual contrast of your images – so your image quality will improve without having to drop money on an upgrade at the electronics store!
While just a soft white glow can help immensely, you can also get fancy with smart bias lighting, which changes color live with the images on the screen.
5. Work with Natural Light Rhythms for Better Health
Color-changing features can also mimic natural light patterns for a healthier home. Many modern homes overuse blue light– light that shines bright in similar frequencies to the sun’s light.
Blue light, like sunlight, keeps your brain alert and focused. When the sun sets outside, the natural world goes from blue to red light (like sunsets and firelight), finally fading to darkness. The gradual shift from blue light to dark allows your brain to shut down and prepare for rest.
Unfortunately, our modern world removes the red light phase of our natural light cycle. We keep blue lights on far too late into the evening and then simply go from bright blue light to darkness. This overexposure to blue light has led many people to have trouble falling and staying asleep.
Studies connect poor sleep with increased depression and anxiety, poor work performance, and increased weight and heart risks.
Many smartphones have a “night mode,” turning the screen a warmer color around sunset. You can set up smart lighting in the same way! We recommend scheduling a color shift, so your lighting sets around the same time every day. Bringing back this natural transition to your family’s schedule can improve everyone’s sleep!
Need Help Creating Your Smart Home?
Proper lighting is essential to a fully functioning home– but it can be challenging to nail balanced brightness, great fixtures, and a budget! Contact the experts at Hansen Lighting for advice on your project!
