Whether you’re buying a new home or upgrading your house to serve you in your golden years, smart-home technology can enhance your living experience and make simple tasks even easier by automating routine aspects of your everyday life. They can also increase your safety, whether you live in a bustling city or in a rural area. Here are some of the top home devices you should consider when upgrading your home or looking for a new house.
1. Smart thermostats
A smart thermostat can help you better regulate the temperature in your home. It can also keep your energy bills low. Smart thermostats work with your schedule, warming or cooling the space when you’re home and adjusting the temperature when you’re out of the house to save you money.
Smart thermostats can adapt to your schedule, but they also come in handy if you want to keep your home at a consistent temperature, regardless of the season. This is particularly important if you or your partner have an illness or impairment that causes your body temperature to drop.
Look for a home with a clear, easy to use smart temperature display with few buttons, a lighted interface, and large display.
2. Smart locks
Staying safe and secure in your home is top of mind for most home buyers. If you’re searching for a new home, you can work with a real estate agent to narrow the list to only include homes with smart locks. If you already own your home, you can have a smart lock easily installed for peace of mind.
Smart locks make it easier to access your home without a key. If you’re always misplacing your house key, opt for a smart lock with a code or other technology to help you get inside. Use a meaningful date or sequence you won’t easily forget for the code to secure your home. Just make sure it isn’t easy for others to guess.
Some smart locks have keyless entries, making it more difficult for burglars to break into your home.
3. Smart lighting
There’s nothing worse than having to get up in the middle of the night and not being able to find the lightswitch on your wall. If you’re aging in place, installing smart lights that operate on sensors can help you better navigate your home, whether you’re going to the bathroom or looking for your phone during an emergency.
You can install smart lighting strips, bulbs, or outlets that work with sensors to turn on when you walk near them. This can prevent unwanted falls or accidents during the night.
4. Smart assistants
Digital assistants, such as Amazon Echo or Google Home, can be a boon to seniors who are aging in place. Having a smart assistant to ask questions to can help improve their quality of life and offer emergency help if they fall or need quick assistance.
These devices are easy to install and small enough to go in every room of your home. Some larger devices also have screens to allow video chatting, which can help you keep more in touch with family.
5. Smart sensors
There are a variety of smart sensors that can help keep track of your routine and alert loved ones or health care professionals if something seems wrong. For example, fridge and kettle sensors can alert someone if you don’t open the fridge regularly or turn on the kettle or coffee pot in the morning.
A bed occupancy sensor can go under your mattress and send an alert if you leave your bed at night and don’t return in a certain amount of time. Pill reminder sensors can also alert someone if you don’t seem to be taking your pills regularly.
Other sensors, such as smoke alarms, motion detectors, gas detectors, and flood detectors, can be used to flag serious problems.
6. Smart doorbells and security systems
If you want to keep your home secure, installing a smart-home security system is one of the best ways to stay safe. Seniors can benefit from the video technology of smart doorbells to show them who’s outside before they open a door. It can also help them keep track of packages and suspicious activity outside of their house.
Smart-home security systems and cameras can help record and survey your property. If you enroll in a home monitoring plan, you can have a company watch your house for you. If not, you’ll still have video feeds and recordings available, so you can alert the police if something unusual occurs.
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