Home Automation LED Lighting Systems
How would you like an LED lighting system in your home that matched your body’s natural rhythms, optimizing your mental and emotional well-being? Or how about LED strip lights connected to motion sensors that guide you to the bathroom in the middle of the night? With home automation LED lighting systems, these are fully feasible options for today’s 21st century home owner.
A home automation system uses wireless networking technology to program and remotely control common household systems including lighting, appliances, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), or the locks of gates and doors, among other common home necessities.
Rightfully so, there has been quite a bit of attention given to home automation in recent years. Home automation LED lighting systems, for instance, are more convenient, more energy efficient, and ultimately more exciting than traditional home lighting systems. Such systems exemplify the use of technology for real human benefit, in contrast to many convoluted technological “solutions” that make things even more difficult. Simplicity is a tremendously important feature as the world looks to reduce its carbon footprint through the automation of routine tasks.
How do home automation LED lighting systems work?
Imagine your home with a full network of LED lights that you can control with an app on your phone or computer. Not quite sure what that would look like? Here are a few examples of the kind of control you would have:
- Motion sensors turn on/off and dim automated LED lights when you enter or leave rooms
- Turn off all the interior lights in your home with a simple click of an app button
- Use your smartphone to remotely monitor and adjust the lighting in your home while away on vacation
- An intelligent lighting system that turns on the lights at sunset and turns them off at sunrise—automatically adjusting for each day
- Configure a human-centric lighting system that optimizes human productivity and emotional stability by dimming, brightening, and changing light temperatures using your home automation LED lighting system
Why are LED lights the best choice for home automation systems?
LED lights are superior to other lighting sources for home automation systems because LEDs allow you to control direction of light, color temperature, and illuminance levels, making them unique among all lighting sources. While the energy efficiency benefits and durability of LED lighting modules are well-documented, it is this advanced controllability that makes LED technology superior to CFL, halogen and other lighting types when it comes to home automation.
What is “human-centric” lighting and why is it the pinnacle of home automation?
With humans spending an increasing amount of time indoors, creating healthy interior environments has become more and more important. One critical component of a healthy interior environment is the quality of its illumination.
Human-centric lighting basically means using a system that is designed to optimize human health in interior environments. The lighting design is meant to optimize human rest potential during sleeping hours, as well as concentration and productivity during waking hours. Human-centric lighting benefits a person’s well-being, mood and health.
Here are some of the benefits of human-centric lighting, as found in a July 2013 study by LightingEurope:
- Improves concentration, safety and productivity in the workplace
- Supports the healing process and prevents the development of chronic diseases among people with irregular daily routines
- Decreased fatigue through shortened wake-up and falling asleep times
- Extending and deepening concentration periods
- Increased emotional stability and lower rates of depression
- Supports the human circadian rhythm, enhances concentration, decreases sleeping disorders, improves cognitive performance, and promotes emotional well-being
In this same study, researchers predict that by 2020, the advanced control features and lowering costs will propel LEDs to take over 90 percent of the human-centric lighting market.
Human-centric lighting is better for our health because it works in harmony with the body’s circadian rhythm—the 24-hour internal human clock. Most people living in the developed world spend the majority of their time indoors where a constant correlated color temperature (CCT) —one that isn’t consistent with our circadian rhythms—is maintained. The circadian rhythm can be altered if we don’t receive regular and direct exposure to different levels of lighting, which can lead to health issues through the years.
In contrast to fluorescent sources, the CCT of LEDs can easily be adjusted with the use of a home automation system to match the outdoors and benefit the body’s circadian rhythm, improving our overall health.
How can Flexfire LEDs help you automate your home lighting system?
Contact Flexfire LEDs to receive more information on our LED strip lights and LED remotes, dimmers and connectors, and find out why we are so excited about LED lighting.