Smart Home Design & What It Can Do For You
Smart Home Design is a Growing Trend Among Builders and Homeowners
From 1957 to 1967, the Monsanto House of the Future was a popular attraction at Disneyland's Tomorrowland in Anaheim. While the theme behind the home was plastics, it was an impressive "Jetsons-like" vision of what a house would look like in 1986, including both "space-age" design and "modern" technology.
The house of the future might seem quaint today; however, when looking back, while it got a lot wrong, like ultrasonic dishwashers and "cold zones" to replace the refrigerator, it got a lot right! Today dimmable ceiling lights, microwaves, electric toothbrushes, plastic furniture, and intercom/security systems are everyday items.
Flash to today, and while we're still waiting for flying cars, we have technology that wasn't even imaginable in 1957. The technology available today, combined with the "Internet of Things" (IoT), has given us the ability to create the true "smart home."
From refrigerators that text you when you're out of milk to self-cleaning toilets and security systems, you can monitor from your smartphone, the smart home is here, and the trend is growing with builders, designers, and homeowners.
While it's more than possible to retrofit your existing home by adding smart components like smart bulbs, security cameras, sensors, speakers, and smart thermostats, today, builders are, from the ground up, designing with smart home technology.
Let's look at some considerations for smart home design, including retrofitting your existing home, and some critical considerations for smart home design from the ground up.
Detailed Planning is the Key
Every designer or architect looks at many details when designing a home to meet a buyer's expectations. From room size and flow to electrical plans and materials, there are several keys to creating an environment that meets the client's desires.
Today, smart home design is another layer of decision-making that can affect not only construction, but as well as finish planning from the earliest stages of the design process. Integrating smart home elements from the early stages of the process ensures that the technology blends into the design seamlessly and doesn't ever feel like an afterthought.
Designing for Today, Looking to the Future
An effective plan begins with deciding how much smart technology the homeowner wants. True smart home design includes sophisticated technology to control lighting, window treatments, entertainment systems, climate, and more.
The critical distinction is the ease of use. The homeowner must be able to control all of the elements effortlessly for comfort, security, and entertainment. Sometimes the potential homeowner may not want complete control of home systems. As the designer or builder, it's a good idea to still incorporate the infrastructure and tech to accommodate future needs or desires. It's impossible to anticipate future technologies. However, there are smart decisions that can be made now to allow flexibility in the future.
Considerations For Smart Home Design
A significant part of the appeal of smart home design is the ability to create savings as well as promote a more sustainable lifestyle. From lowering energy consumption to increasing security and comfort, smart home technology can give you control over much of the infrastructure of your home.
Lighting
There are both wired and wireless methods for integrating lighting control. For flexibility, custom wiring is the best approach. However, lighting control is one smart home element that can easily be retrofitted into your existing home. When designing a smart lighting system, some considerations include where to place switched and keypads, and where to place them in terms of a single room, versus whole-house control.
Even if the homeowner wants to completely control their lighting from their smartphone or tablet, it's always a good idea to include smart physical control, making wiring placement critical.
Audio and Video
Again, both wireless and wired options are available; however, for the best performance, you want to hardwire rooms and outdoor spaces for entertainment options. Bringing 4K video and high-res audio requires high bandwidth, making a hardwired system optimal. As a designer, where to place outlets is a prime consideration that requires taking viewing positions, room layouts, acoustics, and aesthetics into account.
Security
Preparing for a security component requires some forethought. Does the homeowner want to be alerted when their child comes home from school? Do they want disaster precautions like water leak detection? What about controlling access via smart locks or monitoring with security cameras? Should motion sensors be visible, or hidden?
All of these decisions can dictate wiring requirements as well as power needs. Specific equipment may be required to meet functional needs, desired unique features, and aesthetics, all of which must be determined early in the process.
Climate Controls
Integrating smart thermostats is like Nest is easy, and wireless tech works great for monitoring and control. The consideration of where to place them becomes a design choice. You also need to consider where to place additional sensors for the best coverage. Depending on the HVAC, the placement of control pads and sensors in zones needs to achieve a balance of form, function, and aesthetics.
Final Considerations
Whether you're retrofitting your existing home or creating a new smart home from the ground up, consulting a professional early in the design process is the best way to ensure that your home can stay smart as technology evolves.
It's essential to educate yourself on the available technology. You want to make sure that your smart home products are compatible with each other to build a solid foundation that can be expanded upon over time as your needs and technology change. The key is knowing what products don't depend on a smart home hub to operate.
That being said, a smart home hub offers many advantages, the biggest is having a single user interface to control everything. However, they're not always essential. However, one critical element is a reliable wireless router, ideally one that can reach every corner of your home.
While a hubless system can give you the functionality you're looking for to truly experience the sustainability benefits of a smart home, having a centralized hub can improve efficiencies. If you do choose to install a system hub, make sure that whichever you choose is compatible with all of the bits and pieces of your smart home system. Including compatibility in your criteria, today will maximize the value of your initial smart home investments well into the future!
With In Green Living, Joni Keefe shares nature-based design choices for buildings, urban greenspaces, and Interior Design. Her interests follow Real Estate & housing sustainable agriculture, eco-friendly building products, and the latest trends in green design. She is a published writer with horticultural design work featured in national publications, this is her newsletter.