Want to get a smart home that doesn’t cost you ridiculous amounts of money to put together? Here are 12 ways you can remodel your home without breaking the bank on smart stuff you’ll never use anyway:
1. Smart Plugs
One of the simplest ways that you can remodel your house on a budget is to install smart plugs that can be turned on and off from a smart hub with the touch of an app. These are great because they allow you to turn items in your home on and off without touching them, simply keeping the object in the on position and diverting power through the smart plug. With a smart plug, any lamp, record player, or string lights can turn on and off directly from your phone.
2. Smart Thermostat
If you’re trying to stay on a budget a smart thermostat is a great choice because it can pay for itself over time. You spend lots of money heating and cooling your house at the wrong times. A smart thermostat is built to not only figure out what temperature you want the house to be, but to also factor in the weather, time of day, whether or not you are home, and the way that your house traditionally heats and cools. Using all of these different factors, a smart thermostat optimizes your weather to make sure that everything stays optimal for the least possible cost.
3. Smart Hub
Smart hubs don’t generally cost too much money and are valuable because they bring together a ton of different devices in your house on a single platform and app. Get the right smart home and you can be swiping temperatures, televisions, lighting structures, and sound all from the same place. By optimizing your routine through a smart hub you can save plenty of energy and money.
4. Speakers
Speakers that have wires or clunky bluetooth buttons are super old at this point. If you’re doing any extensive remodeling, you should look into building the right smart speakers into the walls and ceiling of your house to get that optimal surround sound feeling. Speakers can bring together the whole vibe of your house and generally don’t cost too much money to install. Plus, the extra life motivation that you’ll get from blasting your favorite indie rock song will be well worth the cost.
5. Smart Lighting
Smart light bulbs can help you optimize the lighting in your house without spending too much money on energy. While you won’t save that much money on lighting and energy–the cost of running a lightbulb is laughable in the total energy cost that you are paying each month–you can at least get a better lit house. Smart light bulbs don’t generally cost too much and can be hooked up with your smart hub so that you can adjust them along with the rest of the house.
Contact us for a FREE Quote on your Window Treatment and Smart Home Automation project.
Serving: Tampa Bay, St. Petersburg, Sarasota, FL.
6. Locks
Locking and unlocking doors with fumbling keys is not a fun task. You’re always running out the door with your hands full of stuff for the car, or running into the house with your hands full of stuff from the car. The last thing that you want to do is to take out your keys and lock the door. Save yourself some headaches and get a smart lock that can be opened and closed with an app on your phone. That way you can unlock the door even before you get out of the car.
7. Smart TV
Smart TVs don’t cost a lot of money and are a great way to bring the entertainment of your living room or bedroom together. Big TVs are out, and people are opting for smaller but smarter TVs. By paying for a smart TV instead of simply a big TV you can get all the entertainment you need, all with wifi, all on one screen.
8. USB Outlets
Converter bricks are always getting left on outlets, lost in junk drawers, and causing unsightly splotches on the walls. While it’s a small tweak, adding USB outlets to the power outlets on your walls will allow you to easily charge USB devices without tangling up cords to plug in a power brick. It’s a small tweak that will go a long way.
9. Smart Doorbell and Security
Paying a monthly security subscription fee? Worried about people taking packages off your door? Smart doorbells and security systems can help you avoid both of these things. While some security systems can cost quite a bit to install, most smart security systems have a fairly affordable base package with add-ons that don’t have to be purchased.
10. Mesh WiFi
Old router wifi setups are infamous for having great service in two unexplainable corners of the house, usually right over the toilet and in a strange corner that no one ever goes to. Those places become the known wifi hotspots of the house and everywhere else is sentenced to endless buffering and annoying load speeds. Surely, there is a better way to get all your smart devices connected to the internet? Definitely, with mesh wifi. Instead of having a single router and trying to extend the signal through boosters, you can save plenty of time and frustration by investing in a mesh wifi system which spreads the signal around with a network of beacons.
11. Smart Appliances
Kitchens are getting smarter, which means that appliances can now send data to your phone to let you know how you are doing. Whether it is nutritional data from your blender or data about your coffee from an espresso machine, all that data can help you make smarter choices about the food that you eat. Investing in smart appliances will help you make smarter choices in the long run.
12. Motion Sensors
Need a simple upgrade on a budget? It’s pretty easy to get motion sensors that can kick on lights in cupboards or outside, and can even be hooked up to automatically turn on string lights in your room when motion is detected. Or if you want to get more creative, hook them up to a lava lamp!