smart blinds, motorized blinds can help manage the solar gain and heat loss your home naturally experiences throughout the day, simply by opening and closing at pre-programmed times. With the addition of smart home technology, blinds can learn when to open and close based on temperature and sunlight, maximizing the energy efficiency of your HVAC system.
Here’s a look at the benefits of smart blindsto help you decide if they’re right for your home.
Comfort
Motorized blinds can be opened and closed simply by pressing a button, remote control, or Smartphone app. Window coverings are a proven way to reduce solar gain and prevent heat loss, and if they’re so easy to open and close, you’re much more likely to remember to do it to benefit you and your environment. Plus, being able to set schedules to open and close them at specific time’s means you won’t have to worry about them at all.
Energy savings
Connecting motorized blinds to a smart home hub can help minimize the amount of energy your HVAC system uses by allowing the blinds to independently respond to data from temperature and solar sensors that are also connected to the smart hub. As a result, the blinds will know when to close during the hottest part of the day to reduce HVAC usage, or whether to open during a sunny day in the winter to allow the sun to naturally heat the room.
Smart home integration
Smart thermostats have a lot of data that can be used to determine whether opening or closing smart blinds will help reduce energy consumption, such as what time of day it is, what the weather is like outside, and what the temperature is in the home. Using all these data points, the thermostat can detect that the room is too hot and instead of turning on the air conditioner, it will close the shutters or do the opposite when it knows the room is cooler than it should be.
Smart lighting
When paired with smart lighting, smart blinds can help maximize the amount of daylight in your home and reduce electricity consumption. For example, opening blinds can trigger smart lighting to go off and vice versa.
Add the R-value
Even without being clever, motorized blinds can add significant insulating value to your windows. Traditional blinds and honeycomb blinds offer an R-value. (A typical double-glazed window has an R-value of 2.0.) You can also get motorized shades to add a layer of insulation to your windows.
Safety
As any parent knows, the absence of cables with motorized blinds is a major safety bonus – you won’t have to worry about keeping them out of your children’s reach. However, in a smart home, blinds can also provide additional security benefits. Lutron’s shutters connect to a Nest security smoke alarm and automatically open when a fire is detected inside, allowing emergency personnel to see into the home.