When envisioning the greatest benefits of a smart home, it is easy to be wowed by high-tech, entertainment features such as custom home theaters while ignoring some of the more practical aspects of home automation. Motorized window treatments may not have the hi-tech appeal of other systems, but they provide some of the most immediate benefits to your Austin, TX home.

Relative Home Systems can design a custom-made motorized shading system that will become a great investment for your family and property. Below are some of the biggest perks of adding Lutron shading solutions to your space. 

Enhance Your Privacy

The biggest reason to add blinds to your home is the most basic, protecting your privacy by blocking the view from the outside. How many times have you come out of the shower to realize you’ve left the shades open? No longer do you have to walk straight to the window to close the blinds. With motorized shades you can use a handheld remote, smartphone or tablet to close blinds without having to approach the window.

Incorporate scenes into your system that anticipate your needs. A ‘morning’ scene can progressively open your shades when you wake up to ease you into your day while an ‘away’ scene makes sure all blinds are closed when you leave the house. In modern homes, these kinds of motorized window treatments are becoming a necessity, especially if you want to add shades to large windows that are inaccessible manually.

Whether you are in the car, at the grocery store or in the office, you take music wherever you go. So it makes sense that you’d want to have a robust whole home audio system integrated into every room of your house. From the moment you walk through your door, you immerse yourself in a realm of sonic bliss. Each room of your home can be customized with a different playlist, which can add an extra dimension to your home decor. And you can have a dedicated listening room built specifically to give your music high-fidelity, studio quality sound. Read on to find out how home audio can change the way you experience your music.

Set the Scene for Family Dinner

It’s getting late on a Sunday afternoon, and your relatives are beginning to arrive for a big family dinner. Luckily, you’ve set the scene throughout your house for a perfect night. Gather in the light and breezy living room with a soundtrack to match the half-lowered shades and soft lighting. From there, filter into the dining rooms – gentle jazz and low lights for the grown-ups and a brighter, funkier atmosphere for the kids. Afterward, come together in the kitchen for drinks and dessert with the right music. With a whole home audio system integrated with your smart lighting and shading, create the perfect setting in every room with the touch of a button.

Create a Soundscape in Your Listening Room

After the family has left, have a nightcap while enjoying your favorite tunes in a dedicated listening room. Fully textured, spacious and detailed sound makes you feel like you’re in the studio with your favorite musicians while they’re recording. Plus, you can add versatility to the space when you install a drop-down screen and projector and switch your receiver to surround sound – thereby creating an engrossing cinematic world in a home theater. All it takes is a few simple commands on your tablet or smartphone.

Running a business is never easy. Whether you have to stay in touch with clients, manage employees or keep track of expenses, you don’t want to be distracted by the simple things like controlling your office spaces. With an office and boardroom control system, you can stay in command of every aspect of your workspace: from staying comfortable and productive to saving on energy costs. Smart technology offers benefits to keep you and your employees working hard to make your business successful. Read on to find out how commercial automation can make running your business easier and more dynamic. 

Lower Costs With Energy Monitoring

It’s a simple truth: your business needs energy to run. From the lighting in every office, to the computers that keep you connected, every aspect of your company requires electricity to keep going. But that doesn’t mean you have to waste money on excess consumption. Keep track of how much energy you’re using throughout the building with smart technology. When it’s time for a meeting, light up the boardroom and turn on the necessary components, like the video monitors and in-wall audio system, to conduct an informative presentation. When you’re done, turn it all off with the touch of a button so you don’t waste a cent on a space that’s not in use. By monitoring your office’s energy usage, you can keep overhead low without sacrificing performance.

Stay Comfortable with HVAC

A comfortable employee is a more effective employee, and as the days get hotter, you’re employees are going to want to cool off while completing their assignments. A heating, ventilation and cooling (HVAC) system can keep your workers content during every season of the year, and the simple, one-touch controls give you complete command of the climate in every room of the building. Lower the temperature in the office if someone gets too warm, and raise it in every office that’s not in use.

If you’re upgrading your smart home, you’re going to want a smart lighting control system. It can help improve your home security, save energy and augment the beauty of your interior design. But it can do more than that. It can also enhance your daily life, make your entertainment more enjoyable and create usable spaces out of ones that you may have previously neglected. Read on to find out how a smart lighting system can upgrade all aspects of your home life. 

Enhance Your Home Theater

When you go to the movie theater, you don’t watch the clerks go through the room, flipping off light switches and turning on the projector. It’s all done in one fell swoop, seamlessly putting you into the cinematic experience. The same can be true for your home theater. Integrate lighting into your home theater controls and you can turn off the overhead lights, lower the screen and projector, turn on your surround sound system and start the film – all with the touch of a button. Plus, by adding floor lighting, you and your family can see where you’re going without disturbing anyone else. All of these elements combine for the perfect viewing experience.

Wake Up to the Perfect Scene

Your morning routine is so familiar to you, you probably don’t even have to think about it. But with a home lighting control system, waking up becomes even easier. By programming “scenes” into your control device, you can have one touch controls that set the perfect mood for any situation. So before you go to bed at night, set the “wake-up scene”, and in the morning you’ll be awoken by gradually rising lights that give your eyes time to adjust. You can also integrate other features of your smart home into the scene, so that the shades slowly rise, the thermostat turns off and your favorite morning music can gently flow through the in-wall speakers of your whole home audio system to make getting up just as pleasant as going to bed.