How to Keep New Year's Resolutions -- Smart Home Edition

It’s time for smart home technology to help with those New Year’s resolutions. 

At AV Design Consultants, we spend a lot of time talking about the benefits of smart home automation and how its many features and offerings can improve the quality of your life. But to help all of our customers start off the year on the right foot, we wanted to hyper focus this week’s blog on specific ways that your smart home can help you remember – and stick to – your 2021 New Year’s resolutions. 

So, we’ve put together a list of some common resolutions and come up with some easily applicable solutions that your smart home will be able to assist with. Whether your goal this year is to lose weight, read more, or something as simple as sleep better – your smart home has you covered. 

Smart Sleep 

Who wouldn’t want a better night’s rest? Improving sleep health is a very common resolution, and most people are surprised how much their overall health and attitude improves just by getting better sleep. 

The good news is that your smart home has your back here -- in more ways than one. If you are the type of person who accidently stays up way too late every night binging Netflix, you can easily program your automation system to turn off your TV at a certain time – sometimes we all need that little extra reminder to make sure we stick to good habits!

Smart lighting can play a big impact here, as well. Scheduling your lights to slowly dim throughout the evening can help your body gradually adjust to darker lighting and start to prepare itself for sleep. You can also set your lights to blink – or totally turn off – when it’s time for you and the family to finally head on over to bed, giving you another smart reminder that it’s time to get some sleep. 

Lighting for the Mind 

If you are working from home like many people, you could very well spend most of your time inside the same four walls with the same lighting day in and day out. Your scenery doesn’t change much, and your exposure to the outdoors is probably ... minimal. 

Maybe your resolution is to get more natural light throughout the day, or maybe you are looking for a little something to help improve your mood during the darker winter months. Either way, smart lighting and shading has you covered.   

With the help of these smart products, you can easily schedule a routine that takes advantage of natural light over the course of the day. Your blinds can open up just enough to let in a little light in the morning, while your office blinds adjust throughout the day to let in enough natural light to help keep things bright, but not so much that it glares your computer screen. You can even incorporate natural light to flood your house during lunch time or the evening – giving you an extra boost of natural light to help you keep your mood up and keep seasonal affective disorder (SAD) at bay. 

Of course, setting up your lighting and shades to work in tandem can be tricky. That’s something we’d love to help you out with! Give us a call today at 479-365-2201, and we’d be glad to explain all the lighting and shading solutions we offer and how they can help you live a healthier – and brighter – life, well beyond the new year.

Working Out in Style 

Working out, eating better, and getting healthier are all quiet common New Year’s resolutions, but they are also resolutions that can be hard to turn into habits. It’s not uncommon for people to kick off such a resolution with an eager attitude in January, only to find it forgotten come February. There’s a multitude of ways, however, for your smart home to keep you motivated and help make those resolutions stick and become habit.  

One easy way to do this is with a smart mirror -- you can set a reminder to pop up on your mirror that reminds you of your workout for the day. You just have to make sure to not turn that reminder off until you’ve actually completed it! If music is an energizing force for you, you could set your multi-room audio system to play your favorite workout jams at the same time every day, helping to put you in the mood to get up, and reminding you to get moving on that workout.  

Worry Less, Smile More 

And last, but certainly not least, everybody could use a little less stress in 2021, and smart home technology is in a unique position to be able to offer just that. 

A smart home security system can go a long way in helping reduce stress and giving you and your family more peace of mind. Whether it’s motion-activated smart cameras that can tell the difference between your car parked still in the driveway or cars moving by in the street, or constant security alerts sent to your phone that let you check in on your house no matter where you are, a smart home security system is a great way to lower the stress of being a homeowner. And, since you’ll feel better about being away from home for long periods of time, it also means more vacations. And there are few things that eliminate work stress like more vacations!

No matter what your resolutions for the new year are, there’s a smart solution that’s bound to help you see them through and make them a reality! If your first step toward those resolutions is upgrading your home with a new smart home automation system, then that’s an easy one for us to help with! Give us a call at 479-365-2201 today and one of our experts will be glad to assist with whatever your smart home goals are.