Lighting is a fundamental aspect of any home. On the one hand, natural light not only allows us to carry out our daily tasks, but also brings warmth and improves our emotional well-being; while, on the other hand, artificial lighting allows us to illuminate the rooms in our home at night and offers us a wide range of customization options to create our own “atmospheres.”
Thus, managing artificial lighting is currently one of the major benefits of turning our home into a smart home. As we’ve seen before, home lighting involves processes that can be easily automated and programmed using technology, so today at CULMIA we want to talk to you about the benefits of incorporating one of these home automation systems into your smart home.
What is smart home lighting?
Smart lighting, also known as smart lighting, is one of the many aspects of smart homes. It involves installing a technological system to control the light bulbs in our home using a smartphone, a remote control, a control hub, or even our own voice. Among its many features, it allows us to adjust the brightness of the lights, choose their tones and colors, and even program changes, as well as turn them on or off.
It is estimated that, by 2025, in Spain, one in five households (21%) will be smart. And one of the simplest ways to make this transition to digital is to opt for smart lighting, due to its ease of installation and its numerous applications. That is why the smart lighting market is clearly booming right now, and the forecast is that, by the aforementioned year 2025, it will grow in Spain at a compound annual growth rate of 24.7%.
What is smart home lighting?
In general, a smart lighting system may consist of:
A central hub
It acts as a control center for the entire system because it uses a wireless communication protocol, such as Zigbee or Z-Wave. From there, we can make whatever changes we deem appropriate, since it can be compared to a light switch. Although, in reality, it’s much more precise than a light switch, because it allows you to adjust the color, temperature, or brightness of the light.
Smart Lights
These are the devices that will light up. They are made using LED technology and can come in the form of light bulbs, panels, strips, etc. They have a chip that allows them to communicate with the controls, so we can request the necessary changes.
A mobile app
After first connecting to the lights via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, this app offers the same—or even more—features than the central hub, since you can adjust the brightness, change the color, schedule when they turn on or off, or create specific operating rules.
Smart Plugs
All it takes is a smart plug to turn a traditional light bulb or lamp into a smart one. In this case, we don’t interact with the lighting system itself; instead, we use an app to control the plug so it turns the light on or off as we wish. However, if you’re using an LED system, your options will be quite limited.
Smart Speakers
Some smart lighting systems allow you to connect to these devices so you don’t even need to have your cell phone or tablet handy. Once properly programmed, we can give voice commands, and the system will automatically make the changes we request. For example, it can turn on the lights when we get home or dim them to create a more relaxing atmosphere.
What are the benefits of installing smart lighting in your home?
So far, we’ve touched on some of the benefits of using home automation to manage the lighting in our homes. But here we’ll go into more detail about its advantages:
Lower consumption and, therefore, greater savings
According to data from the OCU, a Spanish household consumes 9,922 kWh annually, of which 410 kWh are used for lighting. This represents 4% of the total, which amounts to about 39.6 euros of the total electricity bill, which is around 990 euros per year.
LED light bulbs consume approximately 80% less electricity than traditional ones. Therefore, if we were to replace all the lighting in our home, we could achieve proportional savings; although it’s important to keep in mind that the initial cost of purchasing them would be higher, since LED bulbs typically cost around 13 euros, while halogen bulbs range in price from 1 to 4 euros.
Energy efficiency
In addition to lower energy consumption, the ability to adjust light intensity or schedule when lights turn on and off allows us to use them more efficiently. Traditional light bulbs provide fixed lighting and require us to turn them on and off manually, whereas with a smart lighting system , we can easily control them remotely in a way that suits our needs.
Greater durability
LED light bulbs can last up to 50 times longer than traditional ones. We’re talking about 50,000 hours— roughly 5 years of continuous use. So, even though they’re more expensive, the investment pays off in the medium and long term (and then some).
Comfort
Smart home lighting also allows us to stop worrying about it at certain times of the day. For example, if we know we’ll be home at dusk, we can program the living room light to turn on automatically at 9:00 p.m. at a specific brightness level. That way, we won’t have to go specifically to the light switch.
Personalization and Ambience
How are you feeling today? Would you like to brighten up your living room with an energetic color to watch a movie? Or would you prefer a more relaxing color to read a book while you unwind after a hard day’s work? Smart home lighting offers you this and more, because you can decide at any moment how you want your rooms to look. That way, your home will always look just the way you want it to!
Greater security
Yes, smart lighting also allows you to improve your home’s security. It’s well known that burglars tend not to break into homes that appear to be occupied, so home automation lets us schedule lights to turn on and off at specific times of the day so that the system activates even when we’re not home. So from the outside, it will look like someone is home, and the lights will act as a very powerful deterrent to burglars.
Easy installation
We’ve mentioned this before: you don’t even need to buy an LED bulb to set up a small smart lighting system in your home. With a smart plug and a traditional light bulb, you can achieve great results, making this a very affordable and incredibly easy-to-use solution. Not to mention that it’s a wireless technology!
Sustainable option
It is no coincidence that some of the world’s major cities are also implementing smart street lighting. This is a highly sustainable solution for the reasons we have been pointing out: it offers lower energy consumption and greater energy efficiency, as well as a longer lifespan.
Smart lighting: a solution that more and more households are enjoying
In short, smart home lighting offers numerous options . It gives you virtually complete control over the artificial light in your home; so if you haven’t already, we encourage you to install a system like this so you and your family can start enjoying all its benefits .
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