Smart Blinds: A Comprehensive Guide to Home Automation

Smart, connected technology is integrated into every part of our homes, from the living room to the kitchen and everything in between. At Budget Blinds, we’re here to help keep you up-to-date and on-trend with motorization. 

Enter smart blinds and motorized shades! With solutions from our Smart Home Collection, you can raise and lower your window treatments anytime throughout the day. If you want a little more privacy or to block glare from coming into your home, you can easily do so using a remote, app, or other automated feature.

Outdated window treatments often use simple, manual cords. While they may be functional, they're also extremely unsafe if you have small children or pets in your home. Retrofitting your current window coverings with our custom window treatments will eliminate dangling cords and reduce the risk of accidents for children and pets. Our unique retrofit solutions allow you to keep the existing window treatments you know and love and let you experience a new level of enhanced privacy, energy, and money savings.

Smart Blinds

Smart blinds offer an unmatched level of convenience, privacy, and automation all at the touch of a button. Select from several control options--from wireless wall switches to hand-held remotes--to raise and lower your blinds.  In addition, for homes with children or pets, upgrading your existing window treatments to motorized operation offers an enhanced level of safety since there are no dangling cords. 

Another great feature is being able to program your motorized blinds to close when the sun is shining to keep fabrics, rugs, and upholstery from fading and to help save on energy costs. 

Smart Shades

With motorized solutions, your shades will open and close at the touch of a button, or at a preselected time of day or night, giving you effortless control over your window coverings.  Motorized shades perform beautifully and add a new dimension to your at-home lifestyle. They are a perfect automated solution for rooms such as home theater spaces and master bedrooms where convenient light-darkening is often preferred-- get that extra sleep and theater-like experience in the comfort of your own home!  

Motorized shades are also great for those hard-to-reach windows. Let the remote do the work for you! Additionally, smart shades can be set to open and close on specific schedules called “scenes” throughout the day, keeping energy costs down and increasing privacy in any room throughout the house.

Four Benefits of Home Automation

We've gathered the top four benefits of installing home automation via your windows and doors:

Child Safety

Thanks to smart home technology, making a kid-friendly smart home is easier than ever! Improvements in the safety and functionality of modern window treatments make it easy for parents to enjoy looks that are stylish and best of all, safe for little ones.

Many of our shades, including our luxurious cellular shades, can be ordered with a cordless lift or motorized lift, making them an ideal solution for homes with small children. Similarly, several of our custom blinds can also be ordered with our cordless Lift & Lock™ or standard cordless lift system. 

Budget Blinds adheres to the strict guidelines of the Window Covering Safety Council to ensure all our products meet or exceed all safety requirements. Additionally, all Budget Blinds products meet or exceed the American National Standard for Safety of Corded Window Covering Products.

Privacy and Security

Whether you have a bathroom on the first floor or the second, closely situated neighbors and other factors can lead to your room requiring a certain level of privacy. Hit a switch to lower your window coverings before you head to the shower or at night when you are getting ready for bed. As a sanctuary from your hectic schedule, your home should always reflect a sense of safety and security. From adjustable shades to blinds, we have just the solution so you can enjoy spending time with friends and loved ones in a comfortable setting.

With home automation systems you can simulate a presence in your home by scheduling the operation of your window treatments while you're away on holidays or business trips--or even when you leave for just one evening or weekend. If your window coverings are closed 24 hours a day for several days, the house will look vulnerable to potential theft, and you run the risk of coming home to find all your house plants have died from lack of sunlight. With smart home automation, you can automatically adjust some of your window coverings throughout the day or evening to make sure your plants get the sun they need while making sure the shades and blinds are closed at night to keep prying eyes out. With a broad range of window treatments that fuse innovation with trend-forward styling, you and your family can feel at ease any day, any time.

Convenience

It’s hard to rank the benefits of having motorized blinds or shades in your home, but one benefit that resonates with every homeowner is the convenience factor. With the push of a button, you can control every window covering in the room simultaneously. And those hard-to-reach windows? Not a problem anymore.

Motorized window coverings can be opened and closed simply by touching a button, a remote control, or an app on a smartphone. Motorizing your window treatments allows you to automate a repetitive task that is key to the comfort of your home. Additionally, the ability to set schedules to open and close your window coverings at specific times means you may never have to worry about them at all.

Energy Efficiency

Budget Blinds makes it easy, affordable, and beautiful to enhance energy savings with an outstanding collection of home-automated, energy-efficient window treatments. If you thought you had to sacrifice style points for energy-efficient window fashions, think again. Our innovative energy-efficient window coverings provide effective insulation, offering your home increased protection against heat loss during the winter and heat gain during the summer.

Motorized window treatments represent a significant advancement in smart home technology, offering seamless integration into home automation systems like Google Home, Crestron, and Control4. These systems can intelligently manage the positioning of shades to optimize natural light usage throughout the day. This not only enhances comfort and convenience by adjusting to the optimal levels based on time and weather conditions but also improves energy efficiency. By reducing the reliance on artificial lighting and helping maintain ideal temperatures, these smart shades can contribute to more effective use of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, thereby lowering energy costs and increasing the sustainability of the home.

Introducing our Smart Home Collection

The next “BIG” thing regarding technology and a smart household is your window treatments. Today, you can get all your window coverings motorized to accommodate your preferred lifestyle. Budget Blinds offers a wide arrangement of chic and fashionable window coverings that are motorized in our private Smart Home Collection through Rollease. 

What does the Smart Home Collection do

The Smart Home Collection simplifies the control and automation of window treatments through advanced technology. Here's a breakdown of how this innovative collection operates:

• Acts as the central control system for all connected window treatments.
• Allows integration with other smart home systems for seamless operation.
• Is controllable through the Smart Home Collection App.

Why use the Smart Home Collection App

The Smart Home Collection Hub is a key component of the Smart Home Collection, offering numerous benefits for enhancing the convenience and functionality of your motorized shades:

• Remote Access and Control: Manage your window treatments from anywhere using your smartphone or tablet, whether you're at home or away.
• Customization and Scheduling: Easily personalize and schedule your shades to open and close at specific times, adapting to your daily routines.
• Integration with Smart Home Systems: The app seamlessly integrates with various home automation systems, allowing for unified control of your smart home devices.
• Voice Control Compatibility: Operate your shades using voice commands through compatibility with major voice assistants.
• Energy Efficiency: Utilize the dynamic sunrise and sunset function to automatically adjust your shades according to local daylight hours, enhancing energy savings.
• User-Friendly Interface: Customize your experience with over 70 unique icons and organize shades by room or scenes for intuitive control.
• Multi-Hub and Motor Management: Control up to 150 shades with multiple hubs, providing scalability and flexibility for larger homes or varying needs.

Creating a Mood Board for Smart Home Technology

Some people can look at a space and immediately feel inspired. They know what type of seating they want, where that new painting should hang, and what color the lighting in the room should be. For others, it's just not that simple--and that's okay! With so many different options, it's nearly impossible to choose. This is where a mood board will save you time and frustration.

A mood board is essentially a collage you can make of items, styles, and materials you like. This can include images, fabrics, wood and painted tiles, text, flowers, or anything else that gets the creative juices flowing. It's a canvas that allows you to place everything you think you might want in your home and see how they fit together before you start purchasing.

Creating a mood board for each room of your home will help you decide what you're looking for, and more importantly, give you a starting point. Once you've found that point, choosing the perfect smart blinds or shades to match is a breeze.

If you still aren't sure about what you want, our expert design consultants are happy to help you choose an aesthetic that will help bring your dream home to life.

Why Motorized Window Treatments Matter

Lighting is a huge part of our lives. It affects our moods, our lifestyles, and even our health. 

If you're redecorating your home, window treatments should be at the top of your list. The right lighting can make a room look great, but it also affects your mental health. Smart blinds give you more control over how much light enters your home, so even if you can't get outside every day, you're still getting the light you need.

If anything we've mentioned in this post resonated with you, we encourage you to schedule a free in-home consultation with one of our experts today. Creating your dream space with our modern solutions is sure to leave you feeling relaxed and comfortable at the end of the day--and we look forward to helping make that dream a reality!