Smart Home Ideas for a Cozy February
There’s no better time to explore smart home automation for your home than 2026! Smart home automation can save you money on costly utility bills, simplify routines and even boost your overall productivity. Let’s explore some of the best smart home ideas to incorporate into your home and daily routines.
Getting Started: Incorporating Smart Home Ideas
While not required, many people find that a central automated hub, such as Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa or Apple HomePod, can help them control their home’s automation using voice commands and apps.
Once you have established what type of hub or apps you will use, we recommend building your network from there. Ensure your current Wi-Fi network and Home Telecom internet plan can support multiple devices. The more connected devices you have in your home, the more bandwidth you’ll need.
One of the best pieces of advice we can offer when incorporating smart home ideas is to start small and expand from there. For example, start with one or two devices and get used to how they work before adding more to your home.
Smart Home Ideas: Key Areas of the Home
There are several areas of the home you can automate.
- Climate Control – Installing a smart thermostat is especially helpful for energy efficiency, as these devices learn your habits and can automatically adjust heating or cooling based on your schedule.
- Lighting – Smart switches and bulbs can turn lights on/off using motion sensors, dim lights and even set schedules, which can save on utility costs.
- Security – Smart cameras are excellent for providing remote monitoring and smart locks are a great addition for keyless entry. Additionally, if you often forget to lock up when leaving the house, keyless entry lets you remotely lock your home from anywhere.
- Appliances – There is a wide variety of smart appliances on the market today, including washers, dryers, dishwashers, refrigerators, smart vacuum cleaners and more. Having access to the best times to use these devices, based on your personal consumption and energy use, can also help reduce your energy bill.
- Routines – With a smart hub, you can easily set up routines. For example, when you wake up, you can tell Alexa “good morning” and program it to start multiple actions at once, such as adjusting the thermostat, starting the coffee maker and turning on the lights. More advanced automation ideas include contextual control, which lets you trigger if/then actions. For example, you can program gentle wake-up routines that gradually brighten the lights and open smart blinds. You can also program features for watching movies that will automatically lower the blinds, dim the lights and even turn on the TV.
Smart Home Ideas: Top Control Methods
There are four main ways to control your smart home automation.
- Apps – Apps allow you to set up more complex schedules, monitor energy usage and remotely access devices and appliances.
- Voice Commands – A central home automation hub enables quick, hands-free control of your smart home.
- Background Automation – Program actions that run in the background automatically without manual input.
- Physical Buttons or Switches – These serve as overrides and are ideal for children or guests.
Home Telecom’s Smart Home Ideas
Home Telecom offers a wide variety of smart home ideas and app-based control through HomeSmart. You’ll enjoy thermostat control, garage door controllers, keyless entry, 24/7 indoor and/or outdoor video security monitoring, glass-break detection, water protection and smart arming. Contact our team today to learn more about HomeSmart automation and security.