6 ways to smarten up your home

Where you live is important for your health, morale, happiness and overall wellbeing. Dale Kerrigan’s unforgettable line in classic film The Castle, ‘it’s not a house, it’s a home’, typifies the notion that where you inhabit means a great deal to Australians.

Sometimes the houses in which we reside, whether renting or owned, pose challenges and complications when trying to maintain balance in our busy and hectic lives. Nevertheless, you need a place that allows you to sleep, think, work, eat and relax that complements your lifestyle.

With rapid technological innovation and expansion, creating your ideal living scenario has never been easier to achieve than today. Here are six ways to smarten up your home.

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1. Mobile automation.

This is really the zenith of smart home technology today. Home automation is the process of integrating electrical appliances to respond to one master system. Mobile automation means you can control your connected appliances from the smart phone in the palm of your hand.

Depending on the appliances you opt to have connected you could potentially turn the lights on and off, start the dishwasher, pump up the volume and flick off the master switch when you’re ready to hit the hay. You can even set up scenarios where at the touch of your phone screen you can trigger multiple events to simultaneously occur. Think about the time you’ll save when you can set up your ideal mood at the touch of your phone screen.

Mobile automation also means you save money on the energy use of your home. Ordinarily you might accidentally leave lights on or the air con running while you’re out and about. Now from merely opening up an app on your phone and a few touches, you can turn them all off and save on your energy bills.

Image: Sublime Technologies

2. Induct lighting control and sensory lighting.

When it comes to the mood of your home, lighting is key. Have you ever noticed how stark fluorescent hospital lights make you feel anxious or queasy? Investing in the right lighting can work wonders for creating a relaxing and homely environment.

Buying some big Edison light bulbs can transform the look and feel of rooms and reduce power bills. Pair this with sensory technology and you can optimise the use of lights based on what room you’re using. Better yet, most sensory technology comes with modification technology. These allow you to increase or decrease the level of brightness so you can cater to your different moods, whether you’re relaxing with a glass of wine or preparing a complicated meal you can set up your lighting to suit.

3. Setup a security and CCTV system.

Feeling safe and secure in your home is right up there on the list of important things for where you’re living. Whether it’s just your personal or loved one’s protection, or the security of your prized possessions, installing CCTV or security cameras is a great way to mitigate risk and encourage household safety.

CCTV cameras are a proven deterrent for many would-be thieves or fraudsters. New technology in CCTV means cameras are capable of capturing high resolution images. Security cameras can also be sensory optimised, turning on and recording only when they sense movement.

Image:  Sublime Technologies

4. Invest in an air purifier.

Air purifiers are a great way to refresh the air you and your family breathe inside your home. If you suffer from allergies or asthma air purifiers can help by eliminating contaminants in the air and reducing your exposure to dust, allergens, smoke, chemicals and air pollution. Air purifiers aren’t overly expensive and don’t exert excessive amounts of electricity, meaning no nasty bill shock. Jump on Philips and check them out.

5. Employ a robotic vacuum cleaner.

Any device that means less cleaning gets a big tick from us. The geniuses behind robot vacuum cleaners really hit the ball out of the park in minimising the need to manually vacuum our homes. These little critters work while you rest or play, operating to the settings and guidelines you fix. This means you can leave the house and let it do its magic for an hour or two and come back to clean floors. The innovation of robot vacuum cleaners not only smartens up your home, but helps cut down cleaning time. Hoover is the leading company in robot vacuum technology.

6. Upgrade to keyless entry.

Ready to lose those house keys you can never find? Whether you misplaced them or flat out lost them, our lives are too hectic to be rummaging through handbags and scrambling around the house in search of our keys.

If you happen to be the unlucky or forgetful type, you’ll be happy to know that regular old house keys are on the outer, with replacements arriving via keyless systems. Touch code, key-code and finger scanners are available to smarten up both the security and functionality of your home. Whether it be simply swiping your finger or punching in a number, keyless systems make it quicker and easier to get into the home to the space and people you love. Head to trusty old Bunnings for all your keyless entry needs.

These are just a few ideas of how you can help sharpen up your place. As the saying goes, there’s no place quite like home. With rapid development and advancement in technological creativity, making your home more functional is becoming easier. At the end of the day, it’s important to love where you live and making that happen is up to you.

Written by:
Erin Smolenski, from Aarons Outdoor Living