Imagine waking up on your first morning in your brand-new house to the smell of freshly brewed espresso, the lights slowly turning on, the blinds gently pulling up and the speakers coming to life with your favourite easy listening tunes. 

Incorporating home automation into your building plan will make this and so much more, a reality. 

Australian’s are embracing the smart home movement. Our home automation sector is growing year on year, and is predicted to be worth $5.3 Billion by 2023.

It’s easy to see why so many of us are adding home automation to our list of new home must-haves. Automation technology is becoming ever-more affordable and with the advances in what’s possible, today’s systems are designed to adapt intuitively to our lifestyles. By connecting every data outlet, power point and switch in your home to your phone or a hand’s-free operating system such as Amazon's Alexa, Google Home, or Apple's Siri - anything you want to control, you can. 

Here’s 5 reasons we think you should take the steps to future-proofing your new home.

1. Convenience 

We’re busy, we want to live our lives smarter not harder. Home automation enables us to streamline tasks, giving us more precious time for doing what we love. From refrigerators that can keep check on the food that’s inside and alert us when something needs replacing, to requesting music, podcasts, or audiobooks wherever you are in your home with a simple voice command, and having your bathroom fan automatically turn on when the humidity levels get too high. Handing over every-day jobs, means less work for you. 

2. Comfort and entertaining

Picture yourself hitting play on a movie and instantly your doors lock, blinds lower and lights dim! Group elements together and create personalised scenarios; ‘chilled Saturday night’, ‘BBQ with friends’ or ‘arriving home from work’. One tap on your phone from anywhere in the world and a chain of commands is actioned to create the exact ambiance and setting you want to create, think lighting, heating and music – anything you want, exactly when and how you want it.

3. Safety and Security

Ensuring your home, valuables and family are safe has never been easier. By adding smart locks to your windows and doors, you’ll receive notifications if you’ve accidentally left anything open. Use voice controls to allow or prevent anyone from entering your home. And by incorporating smart alarm technology, you can keep an eye on your home from your phone, anywhere in the world. You can even connect a video doorbell so you can see who's there, even if you're not at home. 

4. Smart Investment

Making your home smarter is smart move for your financial future too. According to emerging technology insights provider, Telsyte, 1 in 4 Australians are willing to pay more for a smart home compared to a non-smart home. To really set your home apart though, buyers expect to do more than just turn things on and off remotely – adding features such as energy efficiency, audio-visual functionality and security surveillance will make your home more attractive to increasingly active millennial home buyers. 

5. Energy efficiency

Forgetting to turn off lighting, heating and appliances can be costly – not just on your power bill, but on the environment too. Today’s technology will sense the level of natural daylight and adjust your lighting automatically, sense whether a room is occupied and turn off or on your lights and heating to suit. You can also set a scenario to switch your entire home off with one command so every kitchen appliance, TV, computer, stereo and light is turned off, resulting in dramatically reduced energy consumption when you’re not at home. 

With the introduction of 5G and developments in Artificial Intelligence, soon enough your home will be able to think, make decisions and adapt its behaviours by observing and understanding how you live your life.  Don’t let your home be left behind! Discussing your options with your builder at the beginning of your project will lead to better, possibly less expensive home automation outcomes.    

Sources:
Telsyte - Australian IOT@Home Market Cracks $1BN, Paving The Way For IOT-Commerce Services, May 14, 2019. 
https://www.telsyte.com.au/announcements/2019/5/14/australian-iothome-market-cracks-1bn-paving-the-way-for-iot-commerce-services

Metricon – Smart Home Technology Trends in 2020, October 2019. 
https://www.metricon.com.au/home-truths/2019/october/home-is-where-the-smart-is-technology-trends-in-2