A common misconception about motorized shades is that homeowners will be forced to choose from one of five generic patterns if they want their window treatments to be part of a smart home automation system. This couldn’t be further from the truth! Below, we outline the different possibilities to make motorized shades fit the style and décor of your Westlake, Texas home. 

SEE ALSO: 3 Reasons to Invest in Motorized Shades for Your Home

Fabrics

The type of material used for motorized shades is entirely dependent on which room you’re planning on installing the window treatment. You wouldn’t have the same shades in a media room that you would have in a bedroom, for example. Here are some of the most common types of fabric to consider:

• Blackout: This type of fabric is ideal for home theaters, media rooms, or bedrooms because it completely blocks sunlight from entering through the windows. Particularly useful during Texas’ scorching summers, blackout shades also help to reduce solar heat gain.
• View Preservation: If you have a room with a gorgeous view, you obviously don’t want to hide it away behind curtains. By choosing a fabric style that allows you to see through it while closed, you get the benefits of reduced sunlight glare without compromising on your view.
• Thermal Management: You don’t have to go straight to blackout shades if you want to reduce solar heat gain. There are plenty of fabric types specifically engineered to have a high reflectance value, turning the sun’s heat away while still allowing some daylight into the room.
• Eco-Friendly Materials: For the environmentally conscious homeowner, choose from a strong selection of sustainable fabrics designed to keep your ecological footprint small.

Styles                                       

• Roller: When you want your motorized shades to be a subtle addition to the room, roller shades are a good option. The shades are practically unnoticeable when raised, but still provide complete window coverage whenever you want it.
• Drapery: The perfect shading choice for bedrooms and formal living rooms, traditional drapery can make a big statement. The great thing about motorized drapery rods is that you can add your own draperies to the room for a truly customized design while also taking advantage of the automation technology. Of course, you can still go with drapery fabrics specifically designed for motorized use.
• Honeycomb: The unique design of honeycomb shades makes them easy to fold up tightly, and the air pockets that expand as the shades lower can actually help insulate your home from heat.
• Roman: Similar to the honeycomb style, Roman shades pull the fabric straight up and down. Roman shades offer more variety in pleat and fabric style, so you can find the perfect option for each room.

Patterns

Whether you want your shades to be one neutral color or the fashion statement in the room, there are plenty of patterns to choose from. DB Media Solutions can provide you with a comprehensive selection of patterns and work with you or your interior designer to decide on the best option for each room. Beyond the pattern of the fabric itself, you also have options for the color and material of the curtain rods, finials, and other hardware.

We’ve barely scratched the surface of the different options available for motorized shades, but the point is clear: whatever design or style you’re seeking for your home, we can supply it. To learn more about motorized shades or our other smart home automation technologies, contact us today.

Good news for everyone with Savant smart home automation systems: the intuitive control technology can also be used to manage your multi-room music. Savant recently announced new upgrades to their all-in-one music solution that make it easy for you to enjoy high-quality audio in every room of your Texas home. To learn about the different aspects of Savant’s multi-room music features and how you can take advantage of them, read on.

All of Your Music in One Place

Spotify, Pandora, iTunes, Tidal, traditional CDs… you likely have a lot of different sources for your music. Swapping between streaming services or media types is usually a hassle, but Savant makes it a simple process by centralizing all of the music on a server with plenty of storage for those high-fidelity files. With one touch, your entire music collection is at your fingertips so that you can easily find the perfect song to jam out to.

SEE MORE: 3 Aspects of a High-Quality Multi-Room Music System

Airplay Straight from a Mobile Device

Want to play a song from your iTunes music account? With Savant, you can use Apple AirPlay to instantly start listening to your chosen music within your home—no cords or cables required. With AirPlay, you can continue to use your phone for other activities while the music is playing instead of leaving it docked somewhere as the official “music” phone.

Music Wherever You Are

One of the best things about a multi-room music setup is that you’re not restricted to enjoying music only in one area of your home. Sure, you can get away with adding speakers and stereos to each room and controlling them individually, but nothing beats the convenience of simply pulling up your phone as you walk from one area of your home to the next and having the music follow. The centralized access to all of your speakers and media makes listening to high-fidelity music an effortless process.

What do you use your home’s lights for? The obvious answer is something along the lines of “I use them to make each room bright enough to see,” but your lights can do so much more than that. Below, we outline some of the unique things you can do with a smart lighting control system. Explore the possibilities for your Dallas, Texas home.

Let Your Home Greet You When You Arrive                 

As you’re returning home after a long day of work (or a fun vacation), walking into a dark, empty house can be downright depressing. But what if your home lit up moments before you arrived? Your home’s lighting control system can use sensors to identify when you have entered your property or passed the front gate, then automatically turn on the lights at the porch, entryway, living room, etc. It can even trigger the outdoor lights to illuminate a pathway from your car to the front door if you arrive home at night.

Secure Your Home with “Vacation” Lighting

Break-ins are far more likely to occur when the home is empty for extended periods. To help deter criminals while you’re away on business or vacation, you can use your lighting control system to make the home appear occupied, even when you’re halfway across the world. The lights will mimic everyday use – turning on in the morning, changing from room to room, and finally turning off at night. You can also add motorized shades to your “Vacation” scene to create even more convincing signs of life.

Go Green with Energy-Efficient Lighting

Even if you make sure to turn off every single light every time you leave a room (and let’s face it: who wants to go through all that effort?), the odds are likely that your lighting use isn’t as energy efficient as it could be. By adding sensors, timers, dimmers, and other lighting control technologies, you can make your home’s lighting more eco-friendly while adding convenience and enhancing your home’s decor at the same time.

SEE MORE: 5 Ways to Manage Your Lights With Smart Control

One of the best things about living in a smart home is the ability to customize it to fit your lifestyle. Every smart device in your home can be optimized to make your life more convenient and comfortable. But getting started with smart home automation can seem daunting at first. That’s why we’ve put together this guide of the most popular and useful technologies worth integrating into your Westlake, TX smart home. 

SEE MORE: What Are Some Perks of Living in a Smart Home?

1. Lighting Control: With lighting control technology from Vantage, you’ll never have to walk into every room of your home to turn off the lights before bed or get up from a comfortable spot to brighten the lighting while reading. Instead, all you have to do is tap your smartphone or tablet, and the lights will adjust automatically.
2. Audio/Video System Control: Imagine being able to turn on your TV, select a movie, and adjust the volume for your kids…all without ever stepping into the room that held the equipment. With a centralized A/V system, you have instant access to the speakers, TVs, gaming systems, streaming services, etc. throughout your home.
3. Smart Home Security: Modern security systems go far beyond really good locks and deadbolts. When you make your surveillance and security system “smart,” you gain the ability to view camera footage in real-time from anywhere, lock or unlock your doors remotely, access your home without any physical keys, and more. Your home security can even react intelligently to certain events—for example, calling the fire department if a fire is detected or even shutting off your HVAC system to avoid fanning the flames.
4. A Strong Network: Networking probably isn’t what comes to your mind when you think about smart home automation, but it’s absolutely essential if you want all of your devices to work smoothly and reliably on a daily basis. By optimizing your home network and adding in wireless access points or routers to ensure all devices receive a strong connection, you’ll never have to worry about dropped signals or lagging shows.
5. The Total Control System: Each of the technologies listed above is a great way to make your life a little bit easier at home, but by connecting them all together into one easy-to-use system, you gain a solution that is so much greater than the sum of its parts. Savant’s smart home control systems are intuitive and streamlined so that you can skip the hassle of trying to figure out your technology and go straight to enjoying it.

If any of these smart home automation technologies appeal to you, contact us! We’ll help you design a fully customized smart home solution that includes the technologies that matter most to you.

There are a lot of great smart home automation technologies out there. You can control your lights, your HVAC, and your home security all using one simple system. A popular component of a smart home is a home video distribution system, in which all of your A/V devices are connected to simplify access to shows, movies, etc. To help you decide if a video distribution system makes sense for your Dallas, Texas smart home, answer the three questions below.

SEE ALSO: How to Connect All the A/V Devices in Your Home

Do you have 3+ TVs?

The amount of A/V equipment you have in your home is usually a good indicator of whether home video distribution is a smart investment for you. If you have just a few TVs, each with their own Blu-Ray player or gaming system already set up, then a distribution system may not be as valuable as another automation technology. However, for homes with TVs in the bedrooms, dedicated home theater, living room, patio, etc., a video distribution system can vastly simplify the process of using and managing all of your different TVs.

Do you waste time moving A/V equipment from room to room?

If you want to play your Xbox in your bedroom but it’s currently in the living room, what do you do? Without a home video distribution system, you may resort to unplugging the equipment and lugging it to a different room, only to have to repeat the process the next time you want to use that system elsewhere. It’s time-consuming and annoying, and it makes it difficult to hide your equipment away where it’s not cluttering up your home’s décor. This issue is solved completely by a home video distribution system because you can centralize all of your equipment in one location, such as a utility closet, then easily switch sources using a remote, smartphone or tablet to access the device you want in whatever room you’re in.

Do you have redundant gaming systems, streaming services, etc.?

When faced with moving those devices from one room to the next, many people will decide to skip the inconvenience by just buying an extra device for each room. While that makes it easier to access your media content, purchasing redundant equipment isn’t the best option for two primary reasons.