Think Lights Are Just Lights?
Smart Technology Is Here for Lighting
Digital technology is infiltrating lighting systems, and lights are getting much smarter.
If you are thinking about remodeling your New York City brownstone or co-op, or simply modernizing and upgrading your older incandescent lighting in your existing home; you may have heard about smart lighting systems.
What makes a smart lighting system?
Smart lighting systems apply some of the same technologies that make your phone into a smartphone to lighting control. Read on to find out more.
SEE ALSO: 3 Reasons To Upgrade To a Smart Lighting Control System
LED Technology
One of the big trends in smart lighting is the move to LED technology. The same technology that lights up today’s computer, smartphone and TV screens is taking over residential lighting. Among the many reasons are its flexibility, ability to vary colors and color temperature, efficiency, and durability.
Without getting technical, LED technology mates well with intelligent digital control – meaning processors and software – to do smart things, like change colors and go to very precise levels of dimming and brightness. That kind of control can offer effects which were previously much harder or very expensive to do with incandescent lighting.
Another benefit of LED is it’s adaptability to different form factors. In other words, LED technology allows for different lighting fixture design with far fewer limitations than incandescent or CFL (compact fluorescent) fixtures. That means you will start to see many more design choices for achieving custom lighting effects in your home. One example could be LED strip lighting for closets, which could much better illuminate a space typically difficult to light well with standard fixtures. Isn’t that smarter?
Integration and Connectivity
In previous posts, we’ve talked about things like motion sensors that can determine if there’s activity in a room and turn lights off when not in use. That’s part of what makes up smart lighting control.
Another key aspect of smart is integrating with other systems in your home to provide the atmosphere you want for your activities and even moods. That may be coordinating with motorized shades or smart thermostats to automatically adjust lighting to changes in natural light and climate.
Our lighting partner Lutron is a world leader in lighting systems. They have worked with leading consumer automation technology platforms like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Homekit, and Google’s Nest to bring the ease of voice and smartphone control to lighting systems. Should you want to go with a more sophisticated home automation solution, Lutron systems also integrate very well with systems like Savant.
We’d love to show you all the benefits of smart lighting systems for your New York City abode. Contact us today.
