Among the many incredible developments in custom home design taking off in 2024 is incorporating SMART home technology (self-monitoring, analysis, and reporting technology) — devices and systems that anticipate your needs and adapt to your lifestyles to create greater comfort, convenience, and security. Let’s explore what’s available now to create luxury home features that optimise your home life.

Comfort and Personalised Ambience On Demand

From adjusting the lighting to brewing your coffee, you can command control of countless home operations with an app, voice activation or the wave of a hand.

Return home from a day out into a perfectly pre-cooled or heated home using your thermostat app, supported by custom smart blinds programmed to adjust based on the time of day and season. Wifi-enabled thermostats learn your routines and preferences to automatically adjust the temperature throughout the day to optimise comfort and energy savings.

Automatically activate your outdoor lighting to come on as dusk approaches and set the mood for the evening with intelligent lighting systems that adjust brightness and colour schemes. 

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a key player in smart homes in connecting various devices to a central hub to communicate and work together. Imagine these to make your custom home complete:

• Smart locks that detect your phone on approach, unlocking the door hands-free 
• Monitor your property with motion sensor security systems you can view on your phone and receive real-time alerts
• Voice command your smart speakers to play your favourite music on demand
• Program your lights to wake you up in the morning gently.

Energy and Water Waste Minimisation: Automated and Personalised

Intelligent water heaters learn usage patterns and adjust heating schedules accordingly. WiFi-enabled thermostats similarly learn your routines and preferences, automatically adjusting the temperature throughout the day. You can also control them remotely with your phone – perfect for Victoria’s four seasons in one day.

Wi-Fi-connected systems monitor weather and soil conditions to adjust watering schedules and reduce unnecessary water use, effortlessly keeping gardens thriving year-round. No wonder it’s called smart!

Protecting Your Data and Privacy

The convenience and efficiency of these luxury home features speak for themselves, but since they collect data on habits, routines and energy use, which could be used for targeted advertising or sold to third parties. 

Some devices also require personal and financial information. Hackers can exploit vulnerabilities to view live security camera footage or eavesdrop on conversations to obtain and sell your information on the dark web for identity fraud. 

Protect yourself by:

• Choosing reputable companies with clear privacy policies that don’t sell your information
• Ensuing devices have encryption and activate two-factor authentication
• Opting out of non-essential data collection
• Creating a separate guest network to isolate SMART devices from your primary network, where personal data is kept.

Ready to Experience The Future of Living?

Contact Cobalt Construction today and let us show you how to incorporate smart home technology into your design to bring comfort, security and convenience to your daily life.