Smart lighting solutions give you more control over the ambiance of your home and have a whole host of additional benefits and features.
When we walk into a room, often the first thing we notice is the lighting. Though we may not always realize it, home lighting affects how we live our lives and how guests interact with your space. By installing lighting dimmer systems in your home, you can take advantage of lots of benefits beyond controlling your lighting. Today we are going to be detailing all of the ways that you can improve your smart lighting solutions. Let’s get started!
How Do Smart Lighting Solutions Enhance Your Indoor Space?
Before we get to the lesser known benefits of smart lighting solutions, let’s explore how dimmers enhance your space.
Lighting design in your home is just as important as paint colors and furniture choices. After all, your lighting is what illuminates every design aspect of your home. However, up until recently most people have not taken advantage of lighting dimmer systems for smart lighting solutions to improve their home atmosphere.
If you haven’t been using dimmers, you are probably used to the classic on/off switch. As lighting technology progresses, standard on/off switches are becoming less popular for new home builds and renovations. Why? Because people prefer dimmers that they can easily adjust the ambiance of each room in their home, depending on the occasion.
How Can Smart Lighting Dimmer Solutions Help You Save Money and Energy?
By taking full advantage of your smart lighting solutions, you can decrease your monthly energy consumption.
Your home lighting will make up, on average, 20% of your total energy consumption. That is a large amount of energy considering all of the other appliances it takes to run a household. When you are using a standard on/off switch, you are going to end up wasting money. The reason on/off switches waste so much energy is because they only produce a fixed amount of light. Whether it is sunny, cloudy, or dark, your on/off switches will produce the same amount of light regardless of whether or not it is needed.
When you decide to install a lighting dimmers as part of your smart lighting solutions, you can closely control your lighting depending on your preferences. That means that you can set your lighting to dim and brighten at certain times of the day, you can manually adjust lighting for a dinner party, or you can have a custom programmed setting for reading at night time.
These are just a few of the many ways you can take advantage of a home dimmer system to optimize your life and save money along the way.
What are Some of the Different Types of Lighting Dimmers for Smart Lighting Solutions?
Before you can start reaping the benefits of lighting dimmers, you need to make sure you get the best pairing for your lightning needs.
Selecting the lighting dimmer that works best for your smart home lighting solutions can be tricky, which is why we’re here to demystify some of the different aspects of dimmers. Not all dimmers are the same, so you have to make a careful selection based on your needs and your home. It is extra important to make sure that your dimmer is compatible with your lighting source. Let’s take a look at some of the different types of dimmers and how they work.
- Standard/Rotary – The original dimmer. Mostly used with incandescent light bulbs.
- Slider – Similar to rotary, but with a sliding control mechanism.
- CL – A type of dimmer specifically designed for use with LED and CFL bulbs.
- Electronic Low Voltage – Use an electronic driver to adjust lighting. Most commonly compatible with LED bulbs.
- Magnetic Low Voltage – Use a magnetic driver to adjust lighting. Also compatible with LED bulbs.
- Digital – Lighting is controlled from a WiFi capable smart device.
Choosing one of these systems depends on your home setup, what you want to achieve with dimming, and your choice of lighting. While using a standard/rotary dimmer is still beneficial, more often than not people are installing either sliders or digital lighting controls. In order to take full advantage of the money saving and custom features we discussed before, you will need to install a digitally controlled dimmer system.
When it comes to installing a lighting dimmer for your smart home lighting solution, there are a lot of choices to make. First, you should choose the type of dimmer you want based on your expectations. Then, you should consider which option is best compatible with your existing or future lighting fixtures. Once you’ve decided on the best dimmer system for your home, you can start reaping all of the benefits of using a dimmer system in your home.
