IHOME BLOG

Smart home tech is changing the way we live. The benefits of technology in the home are virtually endless, and the rapid adoption of smart home tech proves that customers are in love!  From waking up, to cooking, and answering the door, activities at home are so much more fun and convenient with smart home tech. Just think of the things we can do today with smart home gadgets: We can monitor home security systems from across town when we're stuck at the office.​ We get push notifications and video when visitors approach our front door, and we can communicate with them without even opening the door.​ We can control lights all around our home with a simple voice command.

You’ve moved house and now your old 40” TV just doesn’t cut it anymore. What you'd really like is a bigger wall mounted TV and to somehow make those cables disappear. One of our customers recently purchased an existing home that featured a beautiful floating cabinet in the living area. Unfortunately their existing TV and power points were located in an awkward position, away from the TV. This meant that their 40” Samsung TV was tabletop mounted with cables tracing the outside of the cabinet to the connection points. Our customer then asked us one of our most frequently asked questions, “How can I wall mount my new TV and make the cables invisible?”. 

Did you know that more than 90% of the information generated on the internet (or cloud) was done so in the last 2 years? Key drivers behind these staggering statistics is our insatiable appetite for new on-line entertainment services such as Netflix, You Tube, Catch up TV, Spotify and Apple Music, which now accounts for over 80% of all digital content on the internet. All of this is before we even consider the next digital chapter called the internet of things (IoT), which is evolving right before our very eyes, ears and fingertips. It will vastly affect how our homes work, how we work and live, and will revolutionise many areas of business and industry.

At Webb & Brown-Neaves, innovation is at the forefront of everything we do. We work with our major supplier of smart home technology, Intelligent Home, on almost all our builds, to ensure our homes reflect the latest in home comforts and meet the level of standard expected from our clients. We spoke with Jamie Gilmore, System Integrator at Intelligent Home, about smart home technology and its predicted development in the future. "Often the biggest concern for people with technology is the learning curve. Smart home platforms remove the learning curve because regardless of make or model, all devices are controlled the same way from a single, uniform interface," he said. 

Architecture and interior design are valued as visual mediums, but we have multi-sensory experiences of our surroundings. Much like home furnishings, sound influences the mood of a space, but too often it’s overlooked. What if we thought of sound in our homes the way we thought of flooring or paint colours — something that brings every room together and makes them part of a cohesive whole? That’s the idea behind what Sonos calls sonic architecture. “You know when you’re walking around a store or hotel and there’s music on but you don’t have to see the source or think about where the sound is coming from? 

“If this was your home what would you do differently?” At first the question was hard to answer, but over time I realised that the way I would cable the home is for “me”, and that is the way I advise my clients they should have their own home cabled. The important thing with any new house is the personalisation of the build to make it into YOUR home. Selecting the right cabling/security/automation requirements is just as important as the tiles, curtains, carpets or tapware. Never look to cable a house based upon what will get more with the resale; cable based upon the requirements of your family and what you will use on a daily basis, whilst still giving you the ability to grow if required.