What Actually Is a Smart Home – And How Can One Transform Your Daily Living?

As you start your smart home journey, you probably have far more questions than anything else surrounding your planning process. But with an installation in your Atlanta, GA home, you don’t have to go at it alone – a smart home integrator can make the entire project a breeze from start to finish and can address every one of your questions and concerns.

But how can you determine that you’ve found the right integrator for you? Keep reading below to see what qualities make up the most trusted smart home companies – and dive into what a smart home can truly do for your daily living!

AV Solutions, Acoustics, & Comfy Seating

A home theater should bring everything you’d find at the local cinema right into the comfort of your own home – but leave all the negative features at the door! No more sticky floors, overpriced snacks, or too-talkative seat neighbors. Well, that last one might still be unavoidable – however, your dedicated home theater design can instead match the views, sounds, and comforts of a commercial cinema and improve them tenfold!

In this blog, we’ll dive into what design aspects truly make up the ultimate home theater in your Atlanta, GA living space and how these features can take your entertainment setup to the next level. Keep reading below to find out more.

How Automated Shading Brings Your Whole Home Together

Have you considered bringing motorized shades to your Atlanta, GA property? This smart solution isn’t always at the top of homeowners’ lists for their must-have technologies. But an advanced shading system from Lutron is a game-changer.

Lutron shades can add convenience, protection, and style to your home’s interiors – plus so much more! Learn more about these innovative shades from a trusted brand by reading on below.

Lighting Automation, Motorized Shading, & Climate Control Help Your Home Go Green

A home automation system that can streamline and centralize your entire smart home will make everyday living a breeze – but what kind of impact will it have on your energy usage? The Crestron Home platform aims to create a smart home experience that delivers top-notch performance while still keeping your space energy efficient.

Below, we’ll dive into the system’s various features that can improve your overall home energy management. Keep reading on for more!

"Don't Be A Dumbell, Make Your Home Fitness Smarter" Control4.com; Accessed August 17th 2021

Sleep Technology

"For the sleep obsessed, there’s a plethora of technology available designed to keep an eye on your sleep quality and habits, from wearables and sensors you place on your mattress to headbands that aim to measure brainwave activity. If you’re already using an Apple Watch or a Fitbit, you’re probably familiar with their built-in sleep tracking functionality. However, there’s a couple new companies offering wearable products that are geared more narrowly towards rest and recovery, like the Oura ring or the WHOOP band. The Whoop tries to parse out the data taken from your everyday life and break it into three categories: strain, recovery, and sleep, then gives you an overall percentage grade of readiness for more strain so that you have some feedback about whether you’re ready for a workout or should be prioritizing rest. The Ouro uses a similar system, but their tracker is a minimalist ring with sensors inside the band."

"The Best Seat In The House" Control4; Accessed August 11th 2021

The Best Seat In The House

A home theater should feel like a special destination in your house—the one place you can retreat for a couple of hours to escape from reality and be transported into another world. The place you like to visit frequently with friends and family to enjoy the latest blockbuster releases—but without walking out with a backache from sitting in a poorly constructed seat.

The Options Are Truly Endless!

A professional home theater installation from our team at Atlanta Audio & Automation entails so many components – from the room’s acoustics and seating to the overall setup. But what about arguably the most important, certainly eye-catching, part of the room?

Your screen display is crucial to the appearance and performance of your Alpharetta, GA home cinema – and when it comes to the sizing, resolution, and type, you have endless options. Keep reading below to explore the possibilities!

"Why You Still Need Wires in a Wireless World" Cedia.net ; Accessed August 17th 2021

What’s wrong with just Wi-Fi?

"In smaller homes, a router-and-modem Wi-Fi rig can handle just so much. With a couple of laptops and a phone or three using the wireless bandwidth in a home that’s under, say, 2,000 square feet, everything will likely work fine. But add anything from a smart TV streaming a movie service to a wireless audio system to a connected fridge, and the bandwidth that particular Wi-Fi device provides can become rapidly unstable. And no one wants to see a frozen screen or “the spinning beach ball of doom” on a device in the middle of a critical Zoom meeting or the kids’ e-learning session."

"5 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Crestron Home" Crestron; Accessed July 27th 2021

5 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Crestron Home

If you haven’t heard about the new residential platform from Crestron, then now is the time.

With Crestron Home™ software, we’ve taken a new approach to residential system design, configuration, deployment, and user experience. Even if you’ve actively followed the progression of the platform, it’s easy to miss or forget some of the many new features. Since the inception of the platform in the fall of 2019, there’ve been three major updates. We expect to release another update around the time of this blog post. Hopefully, you can take away at least one useful thing from this post and use it to provide value to your upcoming job.

"Home Theater vs. Media Room - What's the Difference?" HTA Certified; Accessed July 27th 2021

Home Theater vs. Media Room - What's the Difference?

Nomenclature is a challenge when it comes to home technology. We struggle with terms that resonate with homeowners. From the “AV guy" to system integrators to custom installers to technology designers to low-voltage contractors, the home technology industry seems to have an identity crisis, even though all those terms mean essentially the same thing to an insider. The same goes for the terms that we use to define rooms in the home, which brings us to the topic du jour: What is the difference between a media room and a home theater?

Most homeowners do not know or even care about the difference.

You will hear them referring to their dedicated home theater space as a media room and vice versa. For architects, interior designers, builders, lighting designers, and other contractors, however, these distinctions can be important in defining your vision and communicating with each other. In other words, it’s good to know the difference between the two.

Lighting Control from Lutron, Crestron, and Control4 Improve Your Life and Beautify Your Home

Home lighting is no longer a system that’s simply “functional.” Decades ago, it served one practical purpose – to light a room. However, today’s smart lighting control systems enhance the appeal of a space and offer seamless control for the end-user. From LED recessed lights to fiberoptic lighting to accent lights that create a certain mood, you can design a lighting system in your home that elevates your entire living experience.

Smart lighting from industry leaders like Lutron, Crestron, and Control4 offers an endless variety of products to suit your home’s design and your preferences. Best of all, you’ll enjoy one-touch smart home control that allows you to adjust lighting and shading from anywhere in your Atlanta, GA, home. Keep reading to learn more!

"5 Tips for implementing Home Technology Systems - Without the Pain!" HTA Certified; Accessed July 26th 2021

5 Tips for Implementing Home Technology Systems – Without the Pain!

In a recent conversation with a very experienced builder, it was clear that he and many builders are looking for direction on the best way to have a home’s technology systems installed. He admitted it is difficult for builders to wrap their heads around the myriad technologies and brands available today. He said something that resonated deeply, “We don’t know what we don’t know” about home technology. Yet, technology has undeniably become an integral part of our lives. It is no longer a question of if the home will have technology systems in it, it is a matter of how much technology it will have. Yet, having technology installed in a home has historically been a frustrating experience for many home builders and homeowners alike.

Check Out the Different Ways to Set Up Your Home Entertainment!

Home media systems can take any area of your Alpharetta, GA home to a whole new level. With the press of a button, your flatscreen display and high-end speakers can turn on to envelop you in stunning visuals and immersive audio.

But do you need a dedicated media room in order to enjoy your top-quality system? In this blog, we dive into why a scalable media system is flexible enough to customize and make your own in any way you prefer throughout your property. Find out more by reading on below.

Brighten Every Room with Just the Tap of a Button

Home lighting control can take your living space from a place you eat, rest, and go about daily routines – to an inviting and comforting environment for the whole family to revel in. The best part about smart lighting is that it isn’t just an addition to your existing smart home – it can integrate seamlessly into your whole setup.

Keep reading below to see how smart home lighting can brighten your whole Alpharetta, GA property with innovative features and benefit you in a variety of ways.

Get Out and Enjoy the Game With These Outdoor AV Solutions

Summer is officially here – warmer weather, longer days and plenty of great games to enjoy with friends and family. Since the outdoors are more welcoming than they have been in the previous months, it's time to get out and feel the sun on your face. So what's an Atlanta sports fan to do? How can you catch every second of March Madness or the opening of baseball season while still living it up in the great outdoors? Lucky for you, we've got some great home entertainment system solutions for your backyard.

SEE ALSO: Enjoy Your Home Entertainment Systems in Any Space

"The Smart Home: What You Need to Know" HTA Certified; Accessed July 6th 2021

The Smart Home: What You Need to Know

"So, what’s holding you back from adding a smart home system to your home? Maybe it’s the cost that is intimidating you. Perhaps you’re skeptical of the reliability of the technology. Or in the back of your mind, you may be thinking that it’s going to be a hassle to have it installed. These are all valid concerns, and years ago when smart home technology was in its infancy, this logic was legitimate. But as with any budding technology, smart home systems have grown increasingly smarter, dependable, and economical. Yes, economical. Over the past several years, big names in the smart home industry have taken huge steps in making their professionally-installed system more affordable. Today, you can have a very capable smart home system installed and configured by a professional integrator for less than you would spend on a family vacation."

"Home Theater Design - 3 Essential Ingredients" HTA Certified; Accessed July 6th 2021

Home Theater Design - 3 Essential Ingredients

"Are you in the process of planning a home theater? Possibly you are well into the design or even already have some construction underway. Or, you may have only recently started to consider the possibility. In any case, you have likely been overwhelmed with copious, confusing and often misleading information on just exactly what creates a great home theater experience. To make sense of it all, it is a good idea to step back and consider what is possible, and what is essential to attain the results you desire. This article will consider three key ingredients of proper home theater design.

To be clear by what is meant by the term "home theater" in this article, we are referring to a room dedicated and optimized for movie, music, TV, and increasingly, video gaming. Other synonyms home technology professionals may use interchangeable for the term "home theater" are "home cinema" and private "screening room". What we are not referring to here are dual-purpose rooms that may double as the Living Room, Great Room, etc, that are open to other rooms in the home and that are not able to be optimized for high-performance audio and video. In home technology professional speak, these dual-purpose, more casual rooms are called "media rooms".

Human-Centric Lighting

"Human-Centric Lighting - The Next Big Thing In Home Design" HTA Certified; Accessed June 29th 2021

Human-Centric Lighting - The Next Big Thing in Home Design

"Of all the amenities in a home, lighting can have the most impact on design, ambiance and even your sense of well-being. Set at the appropriate brightness and color temperature, lighting can accentuate the architectural features of your home while affecting your mood and well-being. Smart lighting has the ability to touch every part of our lives in some very positive ways, and the continual evolution of LED lighting technology is largely responsible. LED lighting has also introduced a new approach to lighting design, called Human-Centric Lighting, or HCL*. Able to simulate daylight and dusk and develop a deeper connection with the outdoors, Human-Centric Lighting offers an exciting new approach to home lighting. "

Effortlessly Envelop Yourself with High-Fidelity Sound

Elevating your home entertainment is a key way to taking this summertime to a brand-new level. The ability to play your favorite tunes throughout your Alpharetta home – and even outdoors – lets you enjoy music and media in new ways with friends and family this season.

Keep reading below to see how whole-house audio can transform your summer lifestyle and Georgia property during these relaxing months of the year!

Bring Your Entire Day Together with a Tap of a Button

A smart home system should always simplify your day-to-day life and take away any hassles that could arise from even ordinary tasks! But for a smart system to truly understand your daily needs, it must create a cohesive and centralized setup throughout your Atlanta, GA property.

This is where the Crestron Home platform shines! Effortlessly connect every smart solution and device in your home: With just the tap of a button, bridge the gap between every element of your smart home setup.

Want to find out more about the many solutions this innovative platform offers? Read on below and see how this system and its features can fit into your lifestyle – and check them out in our showroom!