With so many devices communicating wirelessly these days, you might think the days of wiring in homes are over. For many years, homes have been routinely prewired with low-voltage cabling for things like doorbells and security alarms. When home networking was taking off in the late 90s and 2000s, wiring new homes with ethernet cabling was standard practice for connecting desktops and laptops to the internet.

Now, high-speed internet and Wi-FI inside homes are commonplace. A wide array of devices use wireless protocols and Wi-Fi to communicate. So is wiring really needed that much anymore? Yes! It turns out smart home prewiring is still required for building the connectivity infrastructure for the burgeoning number of devices and functions in today's homes. Keep reading below to see what key smart home features still need and benefit from prewiring.

Once upon a time, security cameras in residences were something you’d only see in very high-end properties. If you’re reading this, you likely are familiar with many brands of consumer security cameras like Nest, Ring, Arlo, and more. The high-end systems are still there, and they generally provide more surveillance features than the typical consumer products.

Why install security cameras? The primary driver tends to be for safety, but with modern advanced features, there are many other good reasons to have them. The latest models can detect motion and sound, can see in the dark, and can even discern between cars, animals, and humans. Your security cameras can help keep an eye on pets and kids, and also check in with elderly family members at home.

Features abound in both consumer and professional-level products. What should you look for in the security camera installation for your Atlanta, GA home? Read on to learn more.

What is a whole-home lighting control system? Simply put, it’s lighting control for your entire house in Cumming, GA. We’re not being facetious with the explanation. You don't have to add lighting control everywhere to enjoy the benefits. Some smaller systems can do one room or several rooms. There are DIY products where you can make a few bulbs and switches smart but leave the rest of the lights alone. But a whole-home lighting control system gives you so many more options for control, aesthetics, energy efficiency, and automation with other smart features.

Lutron’s Homeworks is like the Cadillac (or Mercedes or whatever your preference) of lighting control systems. It’s the system that can pretty much do it all when it comes to managing lighting. What do we mean by doing it all? Space here doesn't allow us to do it complete justice, but we'll tell you about five of the best features in this blog. Please stay with us below!

Lighting indoors and out is a critical element of your home. As you know, it's a functional need for visibility, safety, and a host of reasons. And there's an aesthetic side, as lighting adds panache and flair, bringing out all the beauty and detail in a home.

Although many people like to go DIY with landscape lighting, professional designers and installers have years of training and experience in avoiding many pitfalls. In this blog, we've put together five top landscape lighting installation tips from the experts that help you think about outdoor lighting for your Atlanta, GA, home. 

Do you see beautiful pictures of home interiors and sometimes wonder why yours doesn’t quite look as good? You may have better decor and furnishings, but somehow it doesn’t come through. It might be the light. Just as the perfect photograph depends on expertly applied lighting, your home can look far better with the right illumination.

To help you see your Marietta, GA, home in the right light, we’ve assembled four top tips from expert lighting designers to get you started. Keep reading below!

Control4 is known far and wide as a full-fledged home automation system, but it also features a native whole-home audio solution that gives standalone multi-room music systems a run for their money. Not only can you quickly access and share music throughout the home, but you can also manage other smart home functions, such as lights, TVs, and door locks, using the same preferred Control4 device.

Because no Georgia household or music listener is the same, Control4 offers various intuitive control options that suit different preferences. While a handheld remote may be best for controlling music when you’re relaxing on the couch, voice commands may be better when you’re cooking in the kitchen.

Below, we’ll explore five easy ways to command the Control4 whole-home audio system in your Brookhaven or Metro Atlanta home. Get to know the ways and decide which ones you may like best!

GHT firmly believes that audio and video entertainment should not be limited to the interior confines of your house. Your favorite music and video entertainment should be set free, available outside for you at the click of a button. While many people enjoy audio and music outdoors in the relatively mild Georgia climate, we think outdoor TV provides another dimension to al fresco entertainment that will have you spending more much-needed time outside.

While we love to discuss equipment and other considerations for your outside entertainment in these blogs, for this discussion, we'd like to stoke your imagination a bit about what you can do with your outdoor TV in your Canton home. Please keep reading below!

If you’re fortunate enough to live in Buckhead, GA, widely thought of as Atlanta’s premier neighborhood, life is better than in most places. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take some routine and monotony out of life with the help of smart home automation. They say work smarter, not harder, right? Smart home technology lets you live smarter! 

There is a long, long list of what you can do with home automation to make your life easier and have time for things that matter. In the interest of brevity, we’ll detail six of our favorites below for better living through automation. 

Lighting is an integral part of your home. It's necessary for day-to-day living, but it's more than merely functional. Lighting affects the way you see and use your home. All too often, not enough attention is paid to how lighting affects a home. Done well, lighting can make a home more comfortable, usable, and beautiful, but done wrong, it can have precisely the opposite effect!

When you work with professional lighting design experts for your Buckhead, GA, residence, you get specialized expertise with lighting design and technology that brings a different level of illumination to your home. Keep reading to learn seven ways a lighting design company can improve your living spaces.

Do you love the sound of live music? Do you like your music raw, unfiltered, and uncolored? Do you like to feel the music, with all its perfections and imperfections?

If so, you might be the right candidate for Klipsch Heritage speakers. No one ever called Klipsch speakers laid back, analytical, or unemotional. For an analogy in cars (because everyone seems to love them), it’s like comparing a Shelby GT500 to a Porsche 911. Both are fast, fun, and highly capable machines. But the current Porsche is a very refined car, and the Shelby GT500 is like an untamed beast only mildly suitable for street use. Klipsch Heritage speakers have all the in-your-face sonic bravura of the Shelby GT500, letting you feel the emotion in the music. Yet you will also discover that they are refined like the Porsche 911, so you can live with them day in and day out – something you may not want to do with the Shelby.

Keep reading to learn more about the La Scala AL5 to see if it’s right for your Duluth, GA, listening room. And if it’s not, there are four other Klipsch Heritage hi-fi speakers to check out too!

Sometimes, you are tempted to minimize the number of decisions you have to face. For example, take custom window treatments for your Alpharetta, GA home. You might want to avoid going through the time and energy of choosing different window treatments in every room, so you choose the same style, like roller shades, everywhere. Because you also want motorized shades, you proclaim, “Aha! This one decision covers everything.” 

Let us throw a little wrench into the works. Did you know that there are many styles of powered window treatments for all types of windows? And that there are nearly endless variations of materials and colors from which to choose? Oh no, back to the drawing board!

OK, let's make it slightly easier. Keep reading below for some suggestions on motorized window treatment options for three different rooms of your home. We gave you a problem, but we also have the solutions!

Why would you want motorized window shades in your Buckhead home? There's undeniable convenience in pushing a button without getting up or going to each window and opening and closing your shades and window treatments to precise positions. But sometimes, you just have to envision what it's like to have them and what a difference they can make. So let's take a few words below to imagine what it's like to live with motorized shades in your Georgia home. 

We at GHT Group have been offering high-end audio components for years, with such well-known and loved brands as Klipsch, McIntosh, Focal and more. A little bit newer to our thoroughbred stable of hi-fi speakers, we love Monitor Audio because it offers tremendous value and style for the price.

With the new 7G Series – the seventh generation of the middle-of-the-range Silver Series – Monitor Audio continues with its mission to “make audio human.” Monitor Audio calls the new Silver Series "speakers that speak to you." They are meant to bring the emotion back from when you first heard a favorite recording or the soundtrack from a film that has always stuck with you.

Like the new recently upgraded Bronze Series, the Silver Series 7G is a complete line of speakers that can handle anything from two-channel stereo to a full Dolby Atmos surround system. Keep reading below to see if these are the Monitor Audio speakers that speak to you for your Duluth, GA listening or media room.

To paraphrase a common refrain on airline flights, "we know you have many choices in home automation systems, and we're glad you chose us." True, there are many choices in smart home automation. There is an almost bewildering array of options in consumer automation devices and platforms, tied together by software and devices from Google, Amazon, Apple, and Samsung.

But when it comes to managing larger, more sophisticated homes, the choices narrow down further and quickly. Sure, you can use parts of excellent consumer products like Google's Nest ecosystem to manage some functions of your home. You can run your own email server at home, too. But few people operate their own email servers because they have to be quite technically savvy to keep them running correctly. And while consumer home automation is far more accessible, the more you do with it, the more complicated it gets. And there are some things that these systems won't do without a great deal of advanced hacking.

There is a more straightforward way. You can call GHT Group to design and build a customized home automation solution that works exactly the way you want in your Johns Creek, GA home, with no tech support required from you. And if your property is quite large and there are many things to manage – we would likely recommend a Crestron solution, as there are few limits as to what it can do. Read on to learn more about three ways Crestron systems are a different breed of automation solution.

This blog has now been updated; you can view this updated post here.

When it comes to home lighting, how much have you thought about the exterior of your house? We get it. Most people want to make sure that they have the perfect lighting indoors, but outdoor lighting plays a significant role in making your home more beautiful and more functional.

Your outdoor space transforms at night. Consider your garden. When the sun goes down, it looks different. It sounds different. It becomes a new place, and it’s one that you can take advantage of with a landscape lighting installation. You’ll get greater value out of your home while also adding safety and security to your property, and we work with Coastal Source to bring weatherproof, high-performance outdoor lighting and audio solutions to homeowners in the Buckhead area and throughout North Georgia.

Keep reading below to learn about the benefits of a landscape lighting installation for your property.