New smart light technology is changing minds and living rooms across the country, and could well be the next home automation product to see widespread consumer adoption.
Are we in the process of re-inventing the lightbulb? According to GE, the recent developments in smart LED technology represent the greatest shift in the lighting industry since Edison’s original brainwave 135 years ago.
A smart LED not only looks good, but also saves you time and money
A smart LED light saves you time and money by lighting your home more efficiently than a traditional light bulb, and looks good whilst doing it. Smart LED lights are connected to a networking protocol, so you can operate them remotely from an app on your phone. Furthermore, they can be integrated into a smart home control system, which allows you more sophisticated control over your lighting, down to fine-tuning an individual bulb’s level of brightness, or automating a lighting schedule.
The efficiency of the humble light bulb might seem unimportant or even uninteresting, but once you start to consider the quantity of light bulbs in use around the world, it becomes another story entirely. The energy saving implications, as well as financial ones, of even modest improvements in efficiency can be gigantic. An LED light will last for a minimum of twenty years (at three hours of use per day) and is designed for reliable use in extreme heat, cold and humidity. With companies around the world investing in LED research, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in light quality too.
What could you gain from smart LED lights?
Despite these recent technological advances, functionality remains the most important factor for consumers. Some of these bulbs are even able to wirelessly determine your location, meaning that they turn on when you approach the house and off again when you leave. Not only are features like this a major convenience, but they allow for massive savings by preventing lights from wasting energy on empty homes. Of course, for those that want to create the illusion of occupancy, smart lights can run on an efficient timer, fooling would-be thieves into thinking that someone is home.
We’ve already mentioned the fact that the smart thermostat is going to be, for many people, the first step to a connected home, but smart lighting is proving to be a close second. The Phillips Hue Connected Bulb range is doing well precisely because it is a good introduction to lighting control, though it doesn’t come close to what can be achieved with a complete professional smart lighting installation. The ability to dim a light has fantastic implications for both the life expectancy of your product and the cost of your energy bill. Dimming a light by 80% saves 60% of the energy needed and increases life expectancy twenty times over.
Changing the way we think about lighting
When it comes to innovations in lighting, we are only just getting started. Greater control over our lighting systems will have a profound affect on our daily lives, especially if we consider recent advances in our understanding of how lighting can affect our moods and emotions. Not only that, but we may start using lighting in different and unexpected ways. One example of this is the series of Twitter-connected ornaments that light up or change colour every time the user is mentioned in a tweet. For those working at a home office, inventions like this one allow our lighting to give us additional information about the world around us, without us even having to stand up or check a screen.
Have we changed the way that you think about lighting yet? We welcome all enquiries about smart lighting systems and more on 020 7736 1483.