Selling Smart Shading To Your Clients: The 3 Main Benefits 

Smart shading isn’t only about opening and closing the blinds and curtains in the morning and evening. In this blog we’re going to cover the three main benefits and selling points of smart shading. Why not use this blog as inspiration when you have a smart home consultation with your clients? 

This is part 2 of the mini-series on smart shading, read part 1 here. 

Comfort 

Comfort is one of the main reasons a homeowner will be considering home automation, so how does smart shading increase comfort? 

For people with bigger families, or homes with many rooms, it can be a chore to go in and out of every room opening and closing blinds and curtains at the beginning and end of every day. In the most basic way, smart shading increases convenience, with the ability to control blinds and curtains around the home at the touch of a button. You've just given your client 10 mins of their day back! 

Light & temperature control 

We touched upon it in our KNX for wellbeing blog [LINK]: smart shading can also increase comfort by controlling the amount of natural light in the room. Automatically angling blind louvres, raising, or lowering blinds or opening and closing curtains means that natural light can be optimised without consciously doing anything at all. Getting enough natural light is beneficial for well-being and supports a healthy circadian rhythm. 

As well as helping to control natural light, smart shading also helps with temperature regulation. Blinds and curtains can be adjusted automatically to help heat accumulate in a room, which comes in handy in the morning and evening putting less pressure on the heating system and is especially useful in winter months. Conversely, in summer smart shading can be employed to reduce solar gain to keep rooms cool and reduce the demand for air conditioning, which is another energy-hungry system. 

Protection (& viewing perfection) 

Too much light can damage fabrics, furniture, and artwork, so as the sun tracks in the sky and moves around the windows of the home, smart shading can help keep valuables protected. For avid gamers or movie lovers, smart shading with scene control on a remote or keypad ensures optimum viewing conditions by reducing glare and reflections.  

Smart shading means that blinds and curtains can be controlled window by window, at room level or even building wide at the touch of a button. 

Security 

Blinds and curtains are one of the easiest signals for whether someone is home, so should be factored in when discussing home security.  

Privacy 

Privacy is often an important consideration, and with smart shading, blinds and curtains can be programmed to close intelligently, as external light levels drop, and internal lights get switched on.  

What about when homeowners go on holiday? Smart shading can also be used as part of a simulated occupancy setup with a KNX smart home.

Safety 

Smart shading can also help with safety. Should a fire or intruder alarm be triggered, automated curtains and blinds can be programmed to open. In the case of a fire, this allows easier access to escape routes and visibility to the emergency services. 

Energy Saving 

With the cost of energy and living in general in the news daily, everyone is looking for ways to reduce their bills. Smart shading is one of the features of a smart home that helps to improve energy efficiency and has a positive impact by reducing energy consumption. 

Reducing demand and costs 

By utilising smart shading effectively, homeowners can maximise the benefits of heat gain in the winter, as well as help to keep buildings cooler with shade in the summer. Artificial cooling is one of the biggest energy consumers costing homeowners money, so introducing smart shading can significantly reduce costs, especially in warmer climates. 

Sustainability 

It's impossible to avoid seeing and feeling the effects of our lifestyle on the planet, and smart homes are a way to help us all live more sustainably. It takes all the systems in a home working in unison to achieve the best results and smart shading is a key piece of the puzzle. 

Far from being a decorative touch, it's easy to see just how much smart shading can positively contribute to a smart home. The key takeaway from this is to ensure that smart shading is discussed and specified early in any project to make sure the requirements are known and can be factored into the system design.  

If you've got questions, then please email us at sales@ivoryegg.co.uk or reach out to The Umbra Team and don't forget to tell them we sent you!