When looking around at the various technologies being implemented today, you may be surprised at how some unnoticed inventions are currently changing the world around you. One such technology is smart lighting, which is currently transforming how energy is used in your home. Smart lighting includes more than just lights. WIFI, wireless hubs, and home security systems are just a few of the accompanying systems that integrate well with a smart lighting system.
While an integrated home technology system may sound like it is from the future, the present technology available to consumers makes it possible for homeowners out there to live that futuristic lifestyle today. From LEDs to home automation, the world is rapidly accelerating towards the smart lighting future. Below, you will find 12 reasons why smart lighting is changing energy use at home.
- Illuminate Up Your Home
Have you ever wondered how smart lighting in your home will affect your quality of life? Smart lamps are quickly replacing the outdated lampshades and dimmers of the world, because technology has caught up and surpassed the utility of those devices. Smart lamps that combine the energy efficient LEDs and the processing power of a computer to build one integrated light system.
As independent devices, smart lamps offer a wide variety of uses, including a natural gradient setting to slowly wake you up in the morning, as well as a gradient to slowly turn lights on in the evening. Now, you’ll never have to worry about an alarm again.
Another interesting application of a smart lighting system is to build a custom light setting for vacations. Even if you’re not in your home, you can set up a timed lighting system, so it appears as though someone is always home. Vacation settings can help many homeowners, especially if they live in a neighborhood that is at high risk for burglaries or vandalism.
- Convenience
Beyond keeping your lights on when you’re not at home, why not automate your home even when you are there. One key reason why a smart lighting solution for your home is important is the amount of convenience that it provides to you as a homeowner. From setting your controls from wherever you are to building a custom light show with little hassle, you maintain much more power over your lights than with a traditional system.
Much like how tactile light switches have become a long lasting trend, smart lighting is revolutionizing the way people interact with their lights conveniently. So whether you’re coming to a pre-lit home after a long day at work or you’re waking up to auto-adjusted sunrise lighting, you will be amazed by how convenient smart lighting truly is in your life.
- Connectivity With Your Smartphone
Speaking of convenience, you need to know about how smart lighting is becoming more and more integrated into your mobile devices. Remember when you had to physically get up and turn your light switch on or off? Well, those days of dealing with multiple, confusing light switches are now in the past.
You can now control all of your home’s lighting devices from a single hub on smartphone, tablet, or computer. You can also label all of your home’s lights, which can make it easier to identify non-functioning light bulbs easily.
One of the most empowering tools of smart lighting is the ability to control your light settings from your smartphone. So whether you’re home in your bed about to go to sleep or at work for too long, your smartphone has the power to control the brightness and hue of your house lights.
- Saving Costs On Your Energy Bill And Creating Jobs?
Another benefit to a smart lighting system for your home is the cost saving it offers you. By switching to energy efficient LEDs, homeowners across the country could potentially save hundreds of billions of kilowatt-hours in energy use over the next decade. That decrease in energy price could amount to billions of dollars saved for American homeowners over the next decade.
Another benefit to smart lighting technology is that LEDs are longer lasting and pay for themselves in only a few years when compared to the traditional incandescent bulbs. Furthermore, investment in energy efficiency technology has resulted in numerous jobs created across the country with the demand for more electricians and other technicians to install these new systems.
- Rural Urban Development
Across the world, smart lighting is also changing how many rural people develop lighting systems for their areas. For example, in many rural parts of India, there is a growing demand for smart lighting in order to develop their rural areas into new urban centers. Designing and planning a long lasting, inexpensive street lighting system that can sustain the needs of a growing population is just what a smart lighting system can do.
In terms of developing an American home in a rural area, smart lighting technology will make rural living much more simple for residents. Since the ultimate goal of smart lighting is to replace traditional lighting systems, it is crucial that engineers consider rural areas for smart lighting.
Building self-sustaining power grids with distributed power generation or making homes more energy efficient with integrated LEDs are just two potential benefits of a smart lighting system away from the city.
- Energy Savings All Around
While it may seem obvious that a smart lighting system can produce greater energy savings for your home, smart lighting can do so in many different ways. For example, controlling the dim setting on your lights will reduce their overall power consumption significantly. Even a 5-10% dim is unnoticeable but still makes a difference in your energy bill.
Another reason why a smart lighting system in your home can lower your energy bill is it can reduce the power draw that happens when you forgot to turn your lights off. Combined with motion sensing technology and smart shades, you can limit your energy use daily from a simple switch. So, if you’re forgetful like many people, you need to try a smart lighting system to limit your environmental impact.
- Limiting Light Pollution In The City
Smart lighting technology is also working its way into street lamps in cities and neighborhoods. While street lights keep your streets and your community safe, those lights also use up a lot of energy and produce an unduly amount of light within a residential area.
With motion sensors and a connected lighting grid, street lamps could turn on and off as needed while you’re heading down the road. LEDs could also limit the cost and energy use of street lamps significantly. This implementation would mean that smart lighting technology could power more street lamps and limit energy use simultaneously.
By reducing your contribution to light pollution, your community can benefit from overall reduced environmental and financial costs of these overused energy systems.
- Longer Lifespan
You already know how important a long lifespan is to your energy bill and to your home’s environmental impact, but what you may not know are the other ramifications of a long lifespan lighting system. First, with smart automation settings, you are able to preserve lights that are used frequently for much longer; for example outdoor lights and holiday lights need to be monitored in order to keep them for many years.
Second, you eliminate the danger of corded lights fraying or deterioration in high traffic areas of your home with the implementation of Bluetooth-enabled lighting. With cordless lighting, you can turn your home office into a neat and sustainable living space for smart lighting to shine on.
Third, with the integration of LEDs into your home’s smart lighting system, you will notice how infrequent you will actually need to change or adjust those lights. Since LEDs convert electricity into light more efficiently than incandescent, they are the perfect pairing for a home automation system.
- Ambience In Your Home
Another reason why smart lighting can improve the quality of your life is that you can adjust the light patterns in your home with just a tap on your smartphone. For holidays, game days, and house parties, there is no better way to set the mood than with the correct ambient lighting. There are many LEDs that are color-adjustable, which can help you set the mood for a quiet evening or for a wild party.
Also, if you’ve ever researched color theory, you would know that certain accent colors promote certain emotions. For example, calm colors like blue are best for the bedroom and other areas in your home where you want to de-stress. Or if you want to promote productive thinking, try warmer colors like yellow or red that induces an alert feeling in your mind.
Another benefit to ambient smart lighting is holiday themed light scenes. So, when you’re holding your next Fourth of July or Halloween party, you can set themed colors to play in the background. You can integrate music with your lighting display, in order to create the best party on the block.
- Setting Up A Smart Lighting Security System Into Your Home
While you may not want to think about it, home invasions and burglaries are common crimes in residential neighborhoods. As you learned from the first tip, making a vacation setting can reduce the likelihood of your home experiencing a burglary or act of vandalism, however you could also apply this same technology to your home security system.
If you already have a motion detection security feature around your home, then you can customize your lights to send a message to would-be criminals that your home is protected. From making your motion-activated lights turn red to setting a flashing light signal whenever someone or something enters a particular area of your home, there are so many options for you to customize your home to fit your security needs.
- Further Applications Of Smart Lighting Technology
You have learned about so many applications of smart lighting technology, but here are a few more that stand out as extremely important. First, you can integrate renewable and off-grid technologies into your home’s smart lighting system to further reduce your costs and environmental impact.
For example, solar PV panels utilize untapped energy on top of your home during day, but what if you were able to store that energy and utilize it through the night efficiently with your smart light system? You would be able to significantly reduce your energy costs at home.
Another application of smart lighting is home A/C and heating. While you all need to cool or heat your homes, you probably already know that those energy systems can cost a lot over the course of a summer or winter season. That is why smart lighting and home automation is a perfect solution to reduce your bills—you can optimize your home’s dependence on temperature control with an integrated and automated system.
- Integrating Your Smart Lighting System With Your Home
As you have seen, there are so many solutions available with smart lighting, but one question still remains: how will you switch? Looking around at the options for LED solutions, there are many now that include wireless radios, like WIFI, built into them, so you can link your home entertainment system with your lighting system.
Switching to a new smart lighting system can be as easy as unplugging your existing corded devices and replacing them with a cordless hub for all of your home’s lights. As you learned before, cordless lighting helps tidy your home and maintains the longevity of your lighting appliances.
If you’re looking for an even more integrated solution, you could install smart lighting switches throughout your home that would provide feedback on your enabled smart lighting devices. You can control those lights directly from your smartphone, and then you can activate your favorite lighting scene or evening light set. When you’re finished adjusting the lights, you can sit back and relax, since your security lighting and other settings are now automated for you.
Author Bio:
Carolyn Clarke is a freelance writer who has been blogging about the relationship between sustainability and technology for nearly 10 years. She occasionally serves as a marketing consultant for small businesses interested in green technology, such as Atlanta Light Bulbs.