Insights & Innovations: The Integrated Home Blog

Assemble Impressive Lighting Packages for Clients with Selection, Integration, and Support

As a designer, you know how important illumination is to the spaces you bring to life. You also understand that there are almost limitless choices to make in lighting, from ambient to task to decorative and more. Not only that, but the technology component in lighting also adds another layer of complexity, making for more options. Add your client's desires and vision to the list, and we don't envy your challenges.

But The Integrated Home is here to help. For many years we have worked closely with architects and designers to bring the best in lighting control and automation to you and your client’s vision for illumination in your projects. And now, we’ve partnered with Circa Lighting – with a North Carolina showroom conveniently located right here in Charlotte – to help bring together the fixture choices, lighting design services, your sense of style, and the technology into one cohesive package that’s sure to please your clients. 

Keep reading below to see how together we can make every residential home design shine. 

Control4 and DSC Partner to Deliver Integrated, Intelligent Home Security

As a pioneer and leader in smart home automation since 2004, Control4 has earned a well-deserved reputation for working well with many home solutions. To date, the Control4 system can work with over 13,000 devices across a spectrum of home functions, including entertainment, lighting, climate control, and much more. 

To enable a higher level of home security, Control4 has partnered with Tyco Security Products' DSC, one of the leaders in both residential and commercial security. Keep reading below to learn how these two industry leaders created a superior smart home security solution for Charlotte, NC homes.

Spouse and Child-Approved Whole Home Audio for the Family

Once upon a time, audio was fairly simple. You turned on the radio, tuned a station, and adjusted the volume. Or perhaps you put a record on the turntable, pressed a button, and the arm lowered to play the music. While those simple pleasures can still be had, it seems like the digital age has brought more complexity to the listening experience. Now, it’s Pandora or Tidal? TuneIn for radio? How do I get the speakers in the living room to play?

Granted, we have far more capable audio systems today. And if you have a Control4 whole-house audio setup, you have a world of sound at your beck and call. However, the trouble is that some whole-home sound systems can be a little complicated to use. We know of a few people who would rather listen on a Bluetooth speaker (gasp!) because the fancy whole-home system is just a bit too hard to fathom.

Control4, the smart home company, set out to change all that. With the latest Control4 OS 3, they reimagined how a whole-house audio system should operate – in other words, they designed it for actual humans! Read on to see just how easy a house-wide audio system in your Charlotte, NC abode can be with Contro4.

Add Immersive Sound to Your Home Cinema Experience

Surround sound is prevalent these days in just about every kind of video entertainment. For broadcast TV, Dolby Digital has been the standard sound format since the transition to digital in 2009. If you have a compatible soundbar, home theater receiver, or other audio processor and the right speakers, you can enjoy surround sound on many shows, from broadcast to cable to streaming. How well those shows use the extra channels of audio, however, varies greatly.

But you may already know all that. What you may have heard of but not know as much about is Dolby Atmos and another competitive surround format called DTS:X. These are often called immersive surround formats because, well, they are more immersive! While regular surround sound is great, a good Dolby Atmos (or DTS:X) soundtrack might blow you away. So, what is immersive sound, and why is it a great upgrade for your Charlotte, NC home theater? That’s what we’ll get into below!

Architectural Speakers Your Clients Will Hear but Not See

As a design or build professional, you’re always looking for a discreet way to incorporate the latest AV and technology that doesn’t interfere with design and style. For many years, architectural speakers have provided good sound quality with a modest appearance that didn’t stand out. 

But what if you have a discerning client, one who demands high-performance audio that’s practically invisible? It might seem like a tall order, but that’s exactly what you’ll get from Sonance and James speakers. Sonance is a longtime pioneer in architectural audio, and recently the company joined forces with James, bringing a new level of audio performance to architectural speakers. Discover more about these two high-end solutions for your Charlotte, NC projects by reading below.