Are you looking for ways to upgrade your backyard for entertainment or a personal haven? Whether it’s for hosting guests or enjoying nature, smart outdoor living is the answer — and it’s easier than you think. Investing in the right smart home technology and features can transform an ordinary backyard into a modern oasis.
Below is a guide on smart outdoor living essentials and product recommendations from our smart home system integrators.
What are the essentials for creating a smart outdoor living experience?
Creating a smart outdoor living experience requires combining technology, design, and functionality. The key is to find the balance between practicality and innovation to enhance the overall aesthetic and functionality of the space.
Below, we’ll review some of the most popular features to upgrade your outdoor space.
Smart Outdoor Lighting for Easy Management, Functionality, & Aesthetics
Landscape lighting is essential to creating a smart outdoor living experience. It offers the following capabilities and benefits for homeowners:
- Remote lighting control — access to control lighting systems with a smart device anywhere
- Set lighting schedules — saves on energy costs by lowering energy consumption
- Integrate with other smart devices — centralizes all smart technology in one place for easy management
Smart lighting can enhance the functionality and aesthetics outside and can be easily managed too.
5 Types of Smart Outdoor Lights AIS Integrates
At AIS, we offer several different types of landscape lighting, each with unique purposes for your home. We’ll briefly explain what they are commonly used for down below.
1. Spotlights for Highlighting and Security
Spotlights are a great way to highlight specific features in your outdoor living space, such as a statue, fountain, or tree. It can also be used for added security by illuminating your property’s darkest areas.
2. Uplights for Luxury
Uplighting are lights that shine upwards to illuminate a home or specific outdoor area from below. This lighting can create a dramatic effect and highlight your home’s architecture or outdoor areas.
3. Wall Washes to Maximize Space
Wall washing is a lighting technique that evenly illuminates a wall or surface. This type of lighting can create a sense of spaciousness and highlight a wall’s texture.
4. Downlights for Extra Safety
Down lighting are lights that shine downwards to illuminate pathways, steps, and other areas where people walk. This lighting is ideal for safety and creates depth in an outdoor living space.
5. Zone-Dim-Color for Customized Comfort
Zone-dim-color lighting allows you to program different zones in your outdoor living space with various brightness and color levels. These lights can create different moods and atmospheres in outdoor areas. It can also be used for entertainment, events, and special occasions.
If you’re ready to elevate your home’s outdoor lighting, ask about our smart home lighting control systems.
Outdoor Lighting Product Recommendation: FX Luminaire
Look no further than FX Luminaire if you’re considering new ways to add lighting to your outdoor living space. FX Luminaire lighting offers a wide range of smart lights to enhance backyards and outside areas of a home. They have several different types of lights to illuminate pathways, walls, rock features, water features, and foliage.
The best part of FX Luminaire lighting is that it ties in nicely with the ELAN home automation control system. With an ELAN smart home control system, you can manage all your smart home automation devices, including landscape lighting. Manage the color, brightness, and power of your whole-home or landscape lights at home or remotely via a smart device. Overall, incorporating smart outdoor lights from FX Luminaire can add functionality and aesthetic appeal to any outdoor living space.
Interested in automating your home, but unsure how? Ask us about our automated home system services, including a consultation, product recommendations, and installation.
Smart Security System for Added Protection
A smart home security system can significantly improve outdoor living by providing homeowners protection and peace of mind.
Some of the benefits smart home security systems provide are:
- Remote monitoring: Monitors your outdoor spaces remotely through a smart device
- Automatic alerts: Send alerts to your smart security system for unusual activity, such as motions or sounds
- Smart cameras: Provides remote access to a live video feed of your outdoor property
- Night vision: Enables monitoring of your outdoor space in low light and darkness
- Smart Lighting: Provides added visibility and security through automatic motion detection
- Smart lock: Allows remote door control and monitoring of door access
- Smart alarms: Delivers alerts regarding suspicious activity via motion detection
Whether it’s a wired or wireless security system, it can significantly enhance the protection and functionality of a smart outdoor living space.
Smart Outdoor TVs for Outside Entertainment
Smart outdoor TVs enhance an outdoor living space’s overall functionality and aesthetics. Their advanced weather-resistant technology and high-resolution displays can provide an immersive viewing experience outside.
Smart outdoor TVs can be integrated with other smart home devices, such as speakers, lights, security cameras, pool control, and irrigation systems. This allows seamless and convenient control of all your outdoor technology from a single application. Additionally, you can monitor and adjust pool temperature and lighting through an ELAN home control system to manage all smart technology in one place.
Smart Outdoor TV Product Recommendation: Seura
Smart outdoor TVs by Seura are designed to be durable and resistant to weather conditions. They come with features such as anti-glare screens and temperature control to handle climate conditions such as rain and snow. This makes them a reliable and long-lasting option for any outdoor living space.
To make your backyard unique, consider using a motorized projector or a TV mount that can raise or lower when desired. At AIS, we can install your motorized mounts and smart TVs with hidden wiring for you.
Outdoor Sound System to Enhance Landscape Audio
There are many benefits of landscape audio. Mainly, they greatly enhance the entertainment factor of your outdoor space — along with all the valuable features that a sound system comes with.
At AIS, our outdoor-grade wiring is designed to withstand warm, cold, and wet weather conditions. We ensure that all wiring, including in outdoor spaces, is hidden. We use hidden or underground conduit and landscape boxes to run the wire, which can be buried under various materials such as grass, rocks, mulch, and dirt.
Our expertise in selecting the appropriate wiring for various distances and applications adds significant value to our work. Additionally, we use weatherproof fittings and connectors built to withstand harsh weather.
Outdoor Sound System Product Recommendation: Sonance
When it comes to outdoor audio, we recommend Sonance. A Sonance audio system can significantly enhance a smart outdoor living space by providing a high-quality, immersive sound that compliments the natural outdoor environment.
These systems are designed to withstand outdoor elements and provide outstanding performance in any weather condition. They can be integrated seamlessly into the landscape, with speakers that blend in with the surroundings. They can also be placed in various locations, such as decks, patios, gardens, and pools.
The Sonance system offers a wide range of options for controlling audio, including via smartphone or tablet, making it easy to adjust or change the volume from anywhere. Sonance has a reputation for quality and reliability, making it the best option for an outdoor sound system due to its longevity.
Ask us about our home audio system services to make the best decision for your needs.
Smart Home Ideas to Enhance Outdoor Living Spaces
Below are some smart home ideas to enhance your outdoor living experience.
A Smart Gazebo to Create a Fun and Comfortable Outdoor Area
A smart gazebo greatly enhances a smart outdoor living space by providing a range of convenient features. It can be equipped with sensors that detect someone’s presence and automatically adjust lighting and temperature to create a comfortable outdoor environment.
Additionally, it can be integrated with speakers and a built-in sound system, allowing users to stream music, movies, and more outside.
If you want your outdoor living space to be unique and luxurious, pair a smart gazebo with our top-of-the-line outdoor sound system for the ultimate smart living experience.
Landscape Lighting for Easy Access and Versatile Use Year Round
With many landscape lighting options, you can create complex lighting patterns to enhance your home’s design. A benefit of FX Luminaire outdoor lights is that they can blend in with the landscape or be repurposed to stand out as decorations, such as permanent holiday lights. The best feature is that they can be used year-round to set lighting schedules and are customizable for holidays, events, and themes.
Smart Outdoor Light Fixtures to Manage Smart Home Lighting Systems Easily
A popular option for smart outdoor lighting fixtures or systems. These can be controlled through a smartphone app or voice command, allowing you to adjust the brightness and color of the lights easily. Many smart outdoor lighting systems also allow you to set schedules or integrate with other smart devices, such as security cameras or motion sensors.
Transform Your Backyard into a Smart Outdoor Oasis with AIS
With these steps and investing in the right smart technology, you can create an outside space that enhances your lifestyle and aesthetics.
Ready to transform your backyard into a modern oasis? Contact us or use our budget calculator to plan your smart outdoor living space today!
