Insights & Innovations: The Integrated Home Blog

The holidays are an especially beautiful time of year. Lights brighten the neighborhood and make trees glitter. December is the best time to light up your home with seasonal décor and displays. Home lighting control makes managing your decorations and lights easy and fun in your Charlotte, North Carolina home. You may already be familiar with how dimmers, automated lighting, and mobile controls work—but we’ve come up with some ideas on how to use lighting technology to make this season (as well as all of them) extra special this year.

Make a Spectacular Holiday Display with Automated Lighting

If you love Christmastime, it’s likely you won’t forget to turn the lights on. However, with automated controls, you can pick the time you want the lights to go on every night and let it turn on itself—giving you more time to manage other important items. Simply open the Control4 Composer Home Edition software, select the zone of lights that are hanging on the house outside and the Christmas tree, and then pick a time for them to turn on every night. Our team can automate your system remotely so that all of your decorations come on at once—not just the lights—but the toys, videos, and music too. When you can control everything, you don’t have to take up lots of time unplugging every electronic before bed.
Do you want to leave the Christmas lights on late into the night, but you need to hit the sack early? Use timers to schedule the lights to go off later so that the whole neighborhood can enjoy your beautiful showmanship—even while you’re sleeping.

Enhance Decor With Dimmers

Lighting levels are a big part of setting the mood in your home. Bright lighting can invigorate you while soft lighting can make you feel relaxed. Lutron and Control4 dimmers make it easy to enhance your lighting and control your environment for every occasion. We offer wireless solutions for automating and controlling LEDs, track lighting, floor and table lamps, sconces, spotlights and outdoor lighting. With this technology, you can access every lighting fixture in your home and dim lighting levels from your keypad on the wall, smartphone, or other mobile device.
When it’s time to have your holiday meal, hit a button on your phone or tablet to dim the lights down for an elegant atmosphere. Your decorations will really shine bright when the rest of the house lights are dimmed down darker.

For years, gaining access to your favorite entertainment was quite a process. If you wanted to watch a movie or listen to a record, you had to take a trip to the local store and hope they had the one you wanted in stock. Today, however, things are different. Virtually infinite amounts of audio and video content is available to stream through your whole house at any given moment. You simply need a system in your Concord, North Carolina home that can access the content with high-quality picture and sound. In this blog, we highlight a couple of our favorite solutions for streaming entertainment with a whole house audio/video system.

It’s simple: a Control4 system is easy to use, fun for the whole family and practical in every situation. We’re frequently asked why we are a Control4 integrator and why it is our number-one smart home automation system of choice, so we’ve decided to provide our top three reasons of what makes Control4 so great for The Integrated Home and the families in Charlotte, North Carolina we serve every day. Here is our list, focusing on ways the Control4 system can enhance your home:

1.       Control4 Brings the Family Together

Control4 is known for simple, user-friendly interfaces. That means that your kids have command of the entertainment center when they get home from school. And your technology-phobic grandparents won’t have any trouble accessing the lighting controls in any room of the home. Gather the whole family in the home theater for an unforgettable movie night. Use a single device to dim the lights, raise the volume on the surround sound system, select and start the feature presentation. With Control4 integrated into your home, all the control is at the fingertips of your entire family.

2.       It’s a Scalable System

Smart automation is not a monolith – each component is capable of functioning on its own, as well as a with other subsystems. That means that you don’t have to start large to step into the world of integrated technology. Featuring both wired and wireless installation options, Contro4 is very scalable. Pick a room you want to invest in first, and then add on later. For example, craft the automated kitchen of your dreams. Let music from your Sonos system envelope you as you prepare an elegant meal for the family. Follow recipes as they appear on your smart television, unobtrusively installed behind a cabinet façade. Then call the family into the dining room via an HD intercom when it’s time to eat. Once you experience and understand the benefits of Control4 within your kitchen, you can easily expand the experience by installing more smart components throughout your home using your existing network infrastructure.

At The Integrated Home, we get a lot of questions about smart home automation. Our clients in the Concord, North Carolina area want to know what integrated technology can do for their property, and why it’s worthwhile to upgrade new and existing houses with the latest equipment. We’ve heard your questions, and we think it’s about time to answer some of them. In this blog, we’ll take you through the basics: what is smart automation, how it can improve your home, and why it’s a great investment for your present and your future. If you’re interested in enhancing your lifestyle with added convenience, security and fun, read on to learn more.

What is Smart Home Automation?

The answer is simple: it’s a way of taking control of the different devices in your house, and making them work together for an easier and more convenient life. It’s more than simply having remote controlled shades in the living room or motion sensing lights in the yard; it’s integrating these disparate components so that you can control them with the press of one button.

The Integrated Home’s professionals are experts at seamlessly incorporating technology into your home. Augment the look of your dining room with smart lighting, adjust the temperature with an automated thermostat, and choose the perfect playlist for an elegant dinner party with a single, intuitive control device. Do the same throughout your house for a more comfortable and beautiful lifestyle.

How Can Smart Technology Improve Your Home? 

Your home is a reflection of your personal style, and scientifically speaking, a reflection is nothing but light. That’s why a home lighting control system is so important to creating a beautiful, functional and enjoyable space in every room of your house. Whether you want to transform the appearance of your dining room or make your back yard a safer and more attractive place to spend those summer nights, smart lighting can give you total command of the look and feel of your spaces.  Read on to find out how an automated lighting system can transform the way you see your home.

Set the Scene for Sunday Dinner

The sun goes down and the doorbell rings – the family has arrived for Sunday dinner. You were planning to create the perfect atmosphere for everyone to enjoy their meal, but the food took longer than expected to prepare and time got away from you. The solution is simple: lay out a new table cloth, light some candles and sculpt a new, more beautiful space with integrated lighting. With the touch of a button you can lower the lights in specified zones, while leaving others brighter, to evince a layered ambiance that enhances your home décor. 

Summer Fun in the Backyard

Don’t ignore your outdoor spaces this summer. Whether you’re aiming to become the grill-master of the season or you want to cool off in the pool, home lighting control can help you create a lovely and safe place to enjoy the warmer months. Keep the fire going well into the night with an integrated landscape lighting set-up that illuminates every corner of your backyard. And by installing in-pool lighting, you can relax in the watery depths or simply enjoy the beauty of your neighborhood’s most elegant aquatic fixture. With smart lighting, summer evenings are full of illuminating experiences.