New Year, New Home, New Tech! Make 2024 Your Year for Home Automation

Is 2024 the year you are building your dream home on the beautiful Florida Emerald Coast? With any new home, you likely have a vision of what you want it to be. It might be a second home, or it might be your retirement home. Maybe it will serve both purposes. Perhaps you want the same amenities as your current home or something totally different. Regardless of all these decisions, you should seriously consider the top home automation features that will keep your home feeling up-to-date many years into the future. Moreover, it's much easier to plan these features in the design phase, integrating them into your building and interior design plans to take full advantage of all the possibilities with smart homes. Stay with us below as we detail the four key smart home features every Santa Rosa home should have in 2024. 

SEE ALSO: 5 PERKS OF HIRING A HOME AUTOMATION CONTRACTOR

Lighting Automation

There’s a revolution happening in lighting, and you could spell it LED. LED technology has been radically changing lighting options in homes for the past several years. It’s not just a matter of swapping incandescent or compact fluorescent bulbs for LED counterparts. LED has allowed for a greater variety of form factors that let you take lighting to a different level in the home. For example, LED linear lighting can accent ceiling recesses, stairs, and other areas, while wall wash lights can highlight walls and artwork. Newer, small aperture recessed lighting fixtures create sleeker ceiling appearances with far more flexible lighting features, like tunable white light, color, and a warm dim glow to simulate candlelight. The possibilities to elevate your home with today's lighting options are endless.

What does lighting have to do with smart automation? Plenty. Lighting control makes all the different types of lighting, like ambient and accent lighting, easy to control with one touch. You can set the perfect scene for any activity, from cooking to dining to entertaining, without fiddling with multiple light controls. You can also change lighting color, temperature, and hue throughout the day to match circadian rhythms and create a healthier environment. Lighting control combines with other smart home features, too, so lighting is just the beginning!

But all of this should be considered from the start, as the options can dictate how you wire your home for lighting, the lighting controls you should have, and where they should be placed. 

Customized Entertainment

Would you like music to flow freely throughout your home, even outside, to fully enjoy the Emerald Coast climate? Do you want an easy, consistent way to access audio and video entertainment everywhere? You'll want to consider the options for whole-home audio and video. With discreetly installed and even hidden speakers throughout the house and sleekly integrated TV displays, a whole-home system can call up every audio and video option in every room, with high-fidelity sound and high-resolution video. No fumbling with multiple remotes or worrying about which input is available in which area. Do you want to stream music throughout the whole house? Check. How about listening to a vinyl album across rooms? Check. Having the Apple TV and satellite or cable available in every room, with an easy, consistent way to access your favorites? Check. To get to this level of integration, you'll want to plan for wiring and cabling, networking support, built-in speaker locations, equipment closets, and more. 

How about entertainment that hides from view until needed? With the right planning, you can have projectors and screens that descend from ceilings, TVs that hide behind mirrors or artwork, or TVs hidden in custom motorized furniture. Of course, controlling all of it is easy with a home automation system. When coordinated with an integrator, your builder, and your interior designer, the sky’s the limit with these options. 

Automated Window Treatments

Motorized and automated shades and window treatments are a must for the modern Florida home. First, they provide a way to harness natural light easily. They help protect interiors and furnishings from too much sun exposure. Window treatments also provide privacy, but when automated, you can vary the times they are open, shut, raised, or lowered to give the illusion of an occupied home. This is particularly useful if your Santa Rosa abode will serve as a second home. Another long-term consideration for motorized window treatments? As you age, some movements may be more challenging. Managing hard-to-use pulls or chains, especially with larger treatment, might be a chore. With motorization, your window treatments will always be ready for your command. 

While you can retrofit window treatments in a home, the options expand greatly when planned ahead. This might include modifying window recesses for more fitted installation of shades and using low-voltage wiring for powering window treatments versus battery options. Some windows might be hard to reach for battery changes, while very large window treatments may only work with permanent wired power. 

Integrated Home Automation

All three home technology options above can be automated for convenience, but that alone won't integrate them into a comprehensive, cohesive smart home. For that, you want a smart home control platform, such as Control4. A smart home platform brings all these things together, making the whole greater than the sum of the parts. For example, as you arrive home in the evening, lights illuminate a path to your kitchen from the garage, a welcome home playlist greets you in the living area, the temperature is set to your preferred seasonal setting, and your window treatments lower for privacy. This same symphony plays a different tune for your morning routine, entertaining you and retiring for the evening. That's the magic of home automation, and you can have it all. 

GHT Group is the go-to partner for home automation, with an office and showroom right here in Santa Rosa Beach for your convenience. We are experts accustomed to working with designers and builders, executing the vision of your smart home. Let us show you all the possibilities for your next home. Contact us here, or click the chat box below to connect quickly with one of our expert staff members. We look forward to working with you!