What is biophilia? It may sound like a medical term, but it’s not. According to Webster's dictionary, it means "a hypothetical human tendency to interact or be closely associated with other forms of life in nature."

Houston is fortunate to have warm temperatures almost year-round, so it’s not difficult for Texans to get out and enjoy the many natural opportunities in the city and beyond. But work, school, and so many other things activities often require people to spend the majority of their days indoors.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t take advantage of technology to bring nature to us. Sometimes that endeavor is called biophilic design, and increasingly it’s being called by more familiar terms like technology for wellness.

Read on below to learn more about using biophilic technology and design in Houston to create environments that bring aspects of nature inside the home.

SEE ALSO: Upgrade Your Smart Home with Automated Lighting Control

Music is one of those things that can set the mood for many activities – or inactivity, as the case may be. Whether you use it to pump you up as you pump iron in your exercise room, fall asleep to Norah Jones in the bedroom, or have a rocking party playlist for entertaining, music is foundational.

If you’re looking at installing or upgrading your home sound system in Houston, you have many choices. It might be an almost bewildering task, as there has never been as much choice in audio systems as there is today. From powered and wireless speakers to traditional two-channel separate components to home theater audio, there is a vast array of equipment and options to consider.

What’s the best way to break it all down? Keep reading to see what you’ll want to consider.

SEE ALSO: How to Build the Ultimate Whole Home Audio System

Speakers

Most people tend to think about speakers first when it comes to home sound systems. They are one of the most critical factors for getting the sound quality you would like, but definitely not the only one. The choice of speakers, however, tends to influence much of what you need for other equipment in your installation.

At the edge of the Texas hill country here in Austin, we're blessed with abundant natural beauty. Many homes in the area offer views, trees, and greenery that make living here special.

Austin also loves outdoor living. Does any restaurant here not have an outside patio? At home, that outside lifestyle happens in patios, yards, and waterfronts along the lakes. 

When the sun goes down, the outdoors can be especially inviting as the heat of the Texas sun fades. But does your outdoor space have the right lighting to make the most of your Austin landscape? Keep reading to find out more about the benefits of landscape lighting.

Are you looking to make your daily routine simpler than ever? You can add convenience, comfort, and luxury to your Austin, TX living space with a top-notch smart home system in place. Various smart features and technologies can elevate your whole property and take any everyday task or event to the next level – with just a press of a button!

If you’re interested in simplifying your life with a quality Crestron smart home automation system, then keep reading on below to find out more about the benefits of these smart solutions. You’ll learn just how smart technology can completely transform your life.

SEE ALSO: HOW TO OPTIMIZE VOICE CONTROL IN YOUR SMART HOME

Throughout its illustrious history, Crestron has always been at the forefront of smart home technology. It’s no different with the emerging popularity of voice control. The home automation company offers voice control options in its wireless touchpads and has partnered with Amazon Alexa for a whole home solution. As your local Crestron dealer, we highlight the importance of this new partnership and the best ways to optimize voice control in your Memorial, TX home.

SEE MORE: How do You Want to Control Your Smart Home?

The Perfect Combination of Luxury and Efficiency

As we’ve mentioned in earlier blogs, Crestron offers unparalleled versatility when it comes to designing smart systems for your home. Meanwhile, Alexa offers voice services that go beyond simple commands. You can access personalized settings that have been custom-designed for your home. Using Crestron’s open-ended programming and Amazon’s cloud-based software, engineers from both companies have collaborated to create a voice control experience that mirrors the intuitiveness and reliability offered by Crestron’s remotes, touchpads and mobile apps.

Taking Advantage of Voice Control Capabilities

The most versatile space in your Austin, Texas home is your media room or living room. It may vary slightly from family to family, but in most cases, it's used to watch TV, read, listen to music, and host friends. Entertainment systems need to be optimized for more than one function to get the most out of your multi-purpose room. With a professional whole home audio video installation, it's easy to consolidate your equipment and control to create the perfect environment whether you're watching the Texans score a touchdown or hosting friends for Christmas.

SEE MORE: 4 Reasons to Embrace 4K Ultra HD Technology

Hide Away Your Components in an AV Closet

As you think of the ways you want to use your media room, consider the equipment you might need: a cable box, Blu-ray player, AV receiver, turntable, etc. The more you want to do with the room, the more crowded it gets. With a whole home audio video system, you can hide all your equipment in an AV closet, leaving only your speakers and TVs in the room. This way you’re not forced to sacrifice entertainment due to limited space or style considerations.

Consolidate Control on a Dedicated Touchpad

For many people, it can be difficult to find efficient outdoor audio solutions that let them enjoy their favorite artists or playlists on the porch, patio or pool. The most popular approach is opting for Wi-Fi or Bluetooth speakers that are easy to move around and let you stream music directly from your phone. While these makeshift solutions can work in the short term, using outdoor speakers linked to a whole home audio system will yield better results in the long run for four main reasons. Keep reading to learn what they are. 

SEE MORE: Best Speaker Layouts for Outdoor Audio

Damage to Your Equipment

Most wireless speakers are not meant for outdoor use and can be prone to damage caused by water, humidity, or dust.  If you're careful not to take the speakers out in bad weather and bring them back in as soon as you're done, you might be able to keep the speakers safe from serious harm. But if you think outdoor audio is something you'll often be using, the small damage can pile up over time, so even if you're extremely careful, your wireless speakers are likely going to suffer from too much outdoor use. 

Lower-Quality Sound

For many people, it can be difficult to find efficient outdoor audio solutions that let them enjoy their favorite artists or playlists on the porch, patio or pool. The most popular approach is opting for Wi-Fi or Bluetooth speakers that are easy to move around and let you stream music directly from your phone. While these makeshift solutions can work in the short term, using outdoor speakers linked to a whole home audio system will yield better results in the long run for four main reasons. Keep reading to learn what they are. 

SEE MORE: Best Speaker Layouts for Outdoor Audio

Damage to Your Equipment

Most wireless speakers are not meant for outdoor use and can be prone to damage caused by water, humidity, or dust.  If you're careful not to take the speakers out in bad weather and bring them back in as soon as you're done, you might be able to keep the speakers safe from serious harm. But if you think outdoor audio is something you'll often be using, the small damage can pile up over time, so even if you're extremely careful, your wireless speakers are likely going to suffer from too much outdoor use. 

Lower-Quality Sound

While lighting control can offer a lot of futuristic technology –from voice control to access from a mobile app—many of our clients want to stick with the familiarity of their light switches. They’ve grown accustomed to managing their lights this way and change seems more trouble than anything. Does that mean home lighting control is not the right choice for their Memorial, TX property? No, it just means that their system will focus initially on upgrading the light switches in their home.

SEE MORE: 4 Unique Ways to Control the Lights in Your Home

Gain Efficiency With Dimmers and Scenes
A smart lighting control system can increase wall switch efficiency in two simple ways: by incorporating dimmers and scenes. Customarily wall switches are pretty straight forward. They connect to one particular fixture and turn it on and off. With a smart upgrade, you can access multiple fixtures at once and go beyond the limited on/off controls:

• Dimmers: Many clients are surprised to find that most rooms could benefit from not having lights on at a 100 percent intensity. Not only can this help reduce energy usage, but it leads to a more elaborate lighting design. Depending on whether you have a romantic date, are hosting a party, or watching a movie you can find the light level that makes the most sense.
• Scenes: Scenes within your home lighting control system let you manage multiple fixtures at once. You can access these scenes straight from your wall switches. This not only lets you make adjustments quickly, but it also reduces the amount of switches you need so you can eliminate some of the wall clutter. For example, a dinner scene dims the lights in the living room while raising the ones right above the dining table.

See More: 4 Great Lighting Control Scenes for Your Home

Incorporate Other Technology Options
If you have a smart home automation system, you can also manage other technology from your light switches. An easy way to do this is to incorporate volume control in rooms where you regularly play music like a media room or bedroom. Raise or lower the volume of your background music from a switch on the wall. The scenes on your wall switches can also include other technology. An ‘away’ scene on a switch by your front door turns off all lights and TVS, locks the doors and arms the security system

Working with a professional for your landscape lighting installation can result in a system that is not only easy to use, but built to last. Clients that opt for a DIY approach usually face the same design and installation problems that hurt the efficiency of the system. Learning what these mistakes are and the solution for each will help you be knowledgeable when talking to a contractor about your new home or latest upgrade. With the right landscape lighting solution in place, you can ensure you have a design that enhances your outdoor spaces and keeps your Austin, TX home safe. 

SEE MORE: 5 Steps to a Successful Landscape Lighting System

Poor Wire Connections

We begin with one of the biggest problems found in landscape lighting systems: poor wire connections. We partner with Coastal Source for all our projects for this reason. Coastal Source connectors are specifically designed for outdoor use, eliminating the need to cut and splice wire to make it waterproof. The other great thing is that the connectors are what they call "Plug-n-Play”; they link together with a simple twist to create a tight connection between the wires and keep corrosive elements out. 

No Control Solution

A luxury home is not complete without a custom smart technology solution. Now you can have control of your thermostat, entertainment, lighting and more from an elegant touchpad or your smartphone. Deciding which automation company to use is becoming as commonplace as choosing which fabric to use for your drapes. As your local Crestron dealer, we can offer you customized solutions designed to make your Houston, TX home more efficient and beautiful. Keep reading to find out why Crestron is the system of choice for luxury homes nationwide. 

SEE MORE: Will Crestron Improve Your Property Value?

History of Excellence

One thing that makes luxury brands stand out, whether it’s a watch manufacturer or clothing designer, is their reputation. Creating a history of excellence takes time; it takes years of providing high-quality products and service to clients. No company in the home automation industry has a better reputation than Crestron which was founded over 30 years ago with the goal of creating remote control devices for projectors and drapes. Since then, it has expanded to offer top-of-the-line residential and commercial integrated technology solutions. There's a reason it's the technology of choice for the U.S. government—including the White House and military installations.

Customization Options                                         

Listening to music outdoors can be challenging if you don’t have the right speaker layout in place. It's hard to get quality audio to reach every corner of your property. Going louder is often not an option since the sound will soon end up disrupting your neighbors. Having the right layout for your outdoor audio will result in even sound and fewer noise complaints. This blog showcases some of the most common outdoor audio mistakes and offers layout solutions for all your outdoor spaces.

SEE MORE: 5 Reasons to Use Coastal Source in Your Outdoor Audio

Commonly Made Layout Mistakes

Due to the large areas that have to be covered and the difficult nature of installing outdoor speakers, it’s hard to create successful speaker layouts without the help of a professional. A common approach many people take is to mount a couple speakers on their home’s exterior and have them face outwards. You end up with a few problems when you go about it this way.

The main one is that you have uneven sound. In order to get sound to reach the outer edges of your backyard, it becomes unbearably loud in the areas closer to your home. Also, since the speakers are facing outwards the sound will inevitably leak into your neighbor’s property.

Are you looking to upgrade the entertainment rooms in your River Oaks, Texas home? Now may be the perfect time to invest in a private home theater. Designing the ultimate movie-watching experience involves more than simply buying the biggest 4K TV and pairing it up with expensive speakers. Giving your theater an integrated solution lets you have ultimate control over the environment so you can enjoy your favorite entertainment just the way you want to.

SEE MORE: Choosing the Right Screen for Your Private Home Theater

Make It Easy to Find Your Favorite Content

The primary reason to create a smart control solution in your new home theater is to have easy access to your favorite content and easy control of your equipment. Don’t fiddle with a handful of remotes trying to get what you want when you can have it all centralized on a tablet, touchpad or even your smartphone.

With a control solution from Crestron, it’s easy to pick out what you want to watch, how loud you want it to be, and which screen it should play on if you have a multi-screen installation. You can have DirecTV on to watch the Texans game and switch it over to Netflix in a matter of seconds. Everything’s intuitive, so there’s no need to learn 5-button combinations to make adjustments.

Are you tired of being relegated to a specific corner of your Memorial, TX home to get reliable cell phone signal? Our phones are no longer solely used to make calls; we use them to stream our favorite entertainment, control our technology and read up on our favorite topics. Which is why so many people are now investing in cell phone signal repeaters to get consistent coverage throughout the house.

See More: Is Your Home Network Equipped to Handle a Connected Home?

How Do Cell Phone Signal Boosters Work?

Cell phone repeaters are made up of an antenna, a signal splitter, and indoor antennas. Mount your first antenna outside your home where your coverage is the strongest. The signal is received by the antenna and passed through a cable to a splitters which then sends the signals to your indoor antennas. You can include multiple repeaters in problem areas throughout your home. Your smartphone signals then take the reverse route, sending the message to your indoor antenna, to the splitter and back out through your main antenna.

Why Do You Need to Boost Your Cell Phone Signal?

One of the coolest things about having a home lighting control system is the ability to create pre-set scenes. These scenes let you manage multiple fixtures at once so you can set the perfect environment to watch your favorite movies or simply make it easier to wake up in the morning. Using scenes not only makes your Austin, TX home more efficient, but it can also help enhance its style.

Instead of needing multiple switches on the walls to control your lights, you can have an elegant keypad on the wall with each button corresponding to a specific scene. Another great thing about scenes? They’re uniquely yours. The experts at Relative Home Systems can create scenes that match up to your specific activities and preferences. In this blog, we give you some ideas to get you started.

SEE MORE: Gain Control of Your Lights with Lutron and Crestron

Wake Up

Schedule a scene that slowly turns on your lights and opens the shades to wake you up in the morning. If you’re a deep sleeper, you can incorporate your whole home audio so music begins playing through your in-ceiling speakers until you get up. Assign a button in your keypad to turn off the scene. By having to get up to turn it off, you’re less likely to fall back asleep.

One of the coolest things about having a home lighting control system is the ability to create pre-set scenes. These scenes let you manage multiple fixtures at once so you can set the perfect environment to watch your favorite movies or simply make it easier to wake up in the morning. Using scenes not only makes your Austin, TX home more efficient, but it can also help enhance its style.

Instead of needing multiple switches on the walls to control your lights, you can have an elegant keypad on the wall with each button corresponding to a specific scene. Another great thing about scenes? They’re uniquely yours. The experts at Relative Home Systems can create scenes that match up to your specific activities and preferences. In this blog, we give you some ideas to get you started.

SEE MORE: Gain Control of Your Lights with Lutron and Crestron

Wake Up

Schedule a scene that slowly turns on your lights and opens the shades to wake you up in the morning. If you’re a deep sleeper, you can incorporate your whole home audio so music begins playing through your in-ceiling speakers until you get up. Assign a button in your keypad to turn off the scene. By having to get up to turn it off, you’re less likely to fall back asleep.

Ready to experience the convenience of smart home control? One of the biggest perks of a smart home is that you can manage it just the way you want. Whether you want to stick to traditional remotes or adopt the latest voice-command technology, it’s all up to you. Depending on your preferences and your family’s unique needs, we design a solution that makes the most sense. Below are some common control options that could be included in your Austin, TX home.

SEE MORE: 4 Questions to Ask When Upgrading to a Smart Home

Touchpads

Touchpads have traditionally been the control option of choice for smart home automation systems. Even within the touchpad category, there are a variety of options you can go with. You can start with a small touchpad—similar to a tablet—mounted on a table or have touchpads mounted on walls throughout your home. Some larger touchpads can even be used as televisions as well. No matter the size, all touchpads would have the same intuitive menu designed by the experts at Relative Home Systems.

Mobile Apps

A common way to decide if a new purchase is a worthy investment is to figure out how often you would use it. We all have that one pair of shoes that hasn’t seen the light of day in years. This can be true of bigger purchases as well, and it often comes up when clients are considering installing a private home theater in their Memorial, TX home. For movie enthusiasts, the decision is a no-brainer. But there are also a lot of others ways you can use your new theater to make it a worthwhile investment.

SEE MORE: How Can You Design the Perfect Home Theater?

Host the Ultimate Movie Marathon

Get all your family and friends together for the ultimate movie marathon. With comfortable seating, immersive audio, dynamic images, and your personal popcorn machine there's no reason to leave the room for hours. With smart control, it's easy to browse through your Kaleidescape media library to find the movie you want to watch. As soon as you hit play, the shades open to reveal your screen and the lights dim in the theater.

Prepare for Some Streaming Binges

Imagine how great it would be to listen to your favorite music anywhere in your Houston, TX home at the touch of a button. With a whole home audio solution that centralizes control of your music, you can take it with you anywhere you go. But sound systems aren't one-size-fits-all. In this blog, we'll focus specifically on which types of speakers would work best for your system, depending on where and how you're using it.

SEE MORE: How to Build a Whole-House Audio System

In-Ceiling Speakers

Whether you're cooking or hosting a party, you can liven up the atmosphere with the right playlist. In these cases, in-ceiling speakers are the best option. They blend in with your décor, so you can install multiple ones to get evenly distributed sound. Most in-ceiling speakers also use wide-dispersion technology, so sound waves don’t go out in one specific direction. This way, if you walk past a ceiling speaker, you won’t notice you’re standing directly under it. In-ceiling speakers can also be useful in surround sound settings. In Dolby Atmos-enabled setups, you need a couple speakers above the viewer to get truly immersive, three-dimensional sound.

In-Wall Speakers

Landscape lighting is an excellent way to illuminate your River Oaks home, drawing attention to the beautiful architecture and providing light for outdoor entertainment. Getting started with landscape lighting means choosing the types of lights you want throughout your outdoor space. Continue reading to learn about the four main types of landscape lighting and how they can enhance your Texas home.

SEE MORE:Illuminate Your Landscape and Light Up Your Life

Bullet Lights

Bullet lights are typically used to highlight specific areas of your outdoor space, such as topiaries, statues, or artwork. Coastal Source, the top provider of high-end landscape lighting, provides bullet lights with a built-in mechanism that allows you to adjust the scope of the light. This design enables you to shift from sharply focused light to softly diffused light within the same fixture. And with a Lutron control solution, you can manage it all from a touchpad, tablet or smartphone.

Path Lights