Believe it or not, the holiday season is nearly upon us!
At Smart Home Construction, that means it’s time to deck the halls with smart technology! Smart tech can make your life easier all year round, but it’s especially helpful (and cheery!) during the holiday season!
This year, rely on the smart home builders of Smart Home Construction to give you all the best ideas for your smart festivities!
Ideas for a Happy Smart Home Holiday
1. Smart Plugs
At Smart Home Construction, safety comes first, so our first recommendation for your 2020 festivities is to invest in some smart plugs for your home. No matter what holiday you’re celebrating, smart plugs can help you control your energy usage, avoid overheating, and coordinate schedules. Plus, outdoor smart plugs can help you avoid weather damage, all while allowing you to turn on your perfectly synchronized dripping icicle lights without having to swap your slippers for your snow boots!
For the outdoors, Smart Home Construction recommends the Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Outdoor Plug with two independently controllable outlets allowing you to only turn on the things you want. For indoors, we recommend the Wyze Plug, which is both affordable and compatible with most major smart tech platforms.
For added protection, consider investing in a smart smoke alarm, like the Google Nest Protect, which can help you avoid deadly mishaps on the three biggest days of the year for candle-house fires: Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day.
2. Smart Lights
For many, holiday celebrations center around a twinkling Christmas tree. While those celebrations might look a little different this year, you can still have the prettiest Christmas lights on the block— or your social media timeline! If you don’t celebrate Christmas, there are tons of other celebration and lighting options available.
There are countless smart, colorful, and programmable lights that can be added to a tree or roofline, including Twinkly Special Edition Icicle Lights! Twinkly lights tend to run at the high end of the rope-light price range, but the Elfeland Color Changing Rope Lights offer a colorful, dimmable LED strip option at a much lower price point.
3. Smart Decoration Hubs
It’s hard to overstate all the myriad ways that a smart speaker can contribute not just to your day-to-day life, but also to your holiday spirit! These speakers can be used to play synchronized music throughout your home to create any type of festive atmosphere you’d like. Plus, the assistant function of these devices can be used to synchronize your music with other functions in your house, including your programmable lights and plugs.
Smart speakers can help you find recipes and follow them by reading the instructions for you as you go. We all know that this year’s Christmas and Thanksgiving might be a little different, but going all out on a holiday meal can be a great way to reconnect with your holiday spirit!
You can pick the speaker of the major brand you’re most comfortable using, or pick from one of the many lesser-known options available. At Smart Home Construction, we like the Amazon Echo Dot which comes at an incredibly affordable price and is ranked as the best overall smart speaker of 2020 by CNET.
4. Smart Bulbs
We’ve given you an idea for a tool to connect your lights and music, but now you need the lights to make that holiday celebration truly bright! Smart lights come in all sorts of sizes and colors, the decorating opportunities are endless!
You can swap out your normal bulbs for some color-changing and programmable smart bulbs like the Yeelight Smart LED Bulb, which lets you scan your decorations for the perfect color match. If you want to bring a little toasty ambiance to your home, you could try Omicoo LED Flame Bulbs in your fixtures, or the Yeelight Candela, which gives you all the atmosphere of a candle with none of the fire-hazard potential!
5. Smart Security
Smart technology can make your home safer every day, but it can be especially important during the holidays. The holiday season is a big time for deliveries, and that’s more true than ever in 2020.
Doorbell cameras like the Arlo Video Doorbell can alert you if anyone or anything comes into their range. This means you can monitor both when deliveries and packages arrive, and if anything happens to them before you can retrieve them.
Smart Home Construction: Smart Builders for Harlingen
With the end of 2020 rapidly approaching, now is a great time to consider how a home and smart home technology could improve your life.
