If you're an outdoor-type, you probably know that you can set up a beautiful entertainment system and enjoy excellent audio in your backyard and pool area. But a huge part of turning your Atlanta property's exterior space into a functional and fun environment is integrating home lighting control. It's important to remember that outdoor lighting is different from interior setups. In this blog, we'll give you some smart tips on enjoying the outdoors with elegant and long-lasting lights.

See Also: Take Control of Your Home Lighting For a Smarter, Safer Property

Longer Lasting Lights

When crafting an outdoor lighting solution, it's important to consider how long the lights will last. Inside, it's easy enough to change a bulb – even when you have to grab the step ladder and screwdriver – but what do you do when you have to drain the pool or fix other hard-to-reach areas?

The fact is, you don't want to burden yourself with bulbs that should be changed often. That's why LED lights are the perfect solution. Not only are they beautiful, dimmable and customizable, but they last a very long time. How long? If you left them on all day and all night, they could last up to 11 years without replacement.

Whether you want to listen to the latest installment of your favorite podcast or pull up a playlist from your music library, Sonos wireless speakers let you fill your home with sound at the press of a button. As part of your whole house audio solution, these offer reliable, versatile sound for any activity. Unlike the wireless speakers of the past that only let you listen to a select list of songs or stations, Sonos offers thousands of listening options and an intuitive user interface.

SEE MORE:What Speakers Are Right for Your Whole House Audio System?

Pull Up the Right Song in a Matter of Seconds

If you have a song stuck in your head, or the urge hits for an impromptu dance party, you don't have to scour through CDS or different media servers to find the song you want. The Sonos app lets you combine all your different media servers into one central user interface for easy access.
Once you find the song you want, whole house audio is just a button away. For personal enjoyment, play music on the nearest Play:1 speaker. If you're hosting a party, use multiple Play:5 speakers simultaneously so everyone can hear.

Listen to Your Favorite Podcasts

In a connected world, a smart home automation upgrade to your Atlanta home seems like a no-brainer. One-touch controls of all the devices in and around your property make for a simple, streamlined and fun lifestyle. But many of our clients are hesitant to jump headfirst into the world of automation – after all, it seems like a major change to even the most basic functions of your home. That's why we've put together a number of tools to give you a sense of what it's like to live in a connected home. In this blog, we'll show you what you can do to research the smart home experience before you purchase.

SEE ALSO: Explore the Possibilities of Smart Home Automation

Get Familiar With Apps

One of the words you hear most frequently when talking about smart technology is "apps." Most smart devices function with a dedicated app that uses the technology already in your smartphone, tablet or computer and applies it to controlling the device. A system like Control4 or Elan g! offers the ability to combine multiple apps under a single interface. The company can periodically update your app to include new sources for control, meaning you don't have to purchase a new remote every time you want to add a new device. You can find a list of apps for all of your home control needs here.

Take a Look at a Virtual Demo

The Consumer Electronics Show may be held in Las Vegas, but this year’s event means big things are coming to your home entertainment system here in Atlanta. Whether you’re looking for the highest resolution video displays, the most convenient control of your entire system or the next big thing in wireless surround sound, we’ve put together a list of our four favorite things to come out of the biggest technology show in the world.

SEE ALSO: Which Speakers are Right For Your Whole House Audio System?

Plenty of Atlanta’s whole house audio systems are hampered by a simple, easily-overlooked aspect: the quality of the speakers. Whether they don’t offer the right quality of sound, don’t pack enough punch or they simply sound hollow, speakers can seem like more trouble than they’re worth. But they’re absolutely essential to listening to your music the way it was meant to be heard. We aim to resolve your reservations regarding your in-home audio. In this blog we’ll highlight some common problems with home speaker systems, and what to look for in your next purchase. 

SEE ALSO: A Whole House Audio System Gets You Psyched for Sound

Many of our clients love to while away their weekends in the comfort and luxury of a home theater or media room. But when it’s time to work, they need a smart home automation system that helps them get through the day. Whether you need to stay focused by eliminating menial daily tasks or stay in control when you’re away from home, integrated technology can enhance your everyday life. Read on to discover how smart automation helps you out when you’re on the go.

SEE ALSO: Improve Your Daily Life With Smart Home Automation

Be the Early Bird With Smart Shading

You know the old saying: “the early bird gets the worm”. Well, there’s no better way to wake up bright and early than with a healthy helping of all-natural sunlight. But plenty of homeowners prefer to eliminate outside disturbances through the night by drawing the blinds before bedtime. So how do you get the best of both worlds? The answer is simple: smart shading.

When automated shading is integrated into your smart home system, you have complete control over the position of your shades and blinds with the touch of a button. Pre-program the shades to rise at a certain time of the morning, or let them learn to react on their own to different conditions and habits.

If you’ve been following our blog, you know we’ve told you about how home lighting control can enhance your home security and make your home entertainment more functional. Now it’s time to break down how smart lighting can give your media and game room more personality. Automated lighting does more than simply make it easier to see in your spaces – it defines the tone and sets the scene for any situation. That goes for everything from October’s Halloween horror-movie marathons to Sunday afternoon football, to late-night gaming between your kids and their friends. Read on to find out how smart lighting can make your media room more fun and exciting.

Choose a Color

Over the past few years, LED lighting has begun to dominate the market. It’s a brilliant way to save energy and gain directionalcontrol over your lighting fixtures. But one feature has gotten us pretty excited: the ability to change the color of your lighting with the touch of a button.

In 2012, Philips launched a new line of light bulbs under the name Hue, giving homeowners the ability to change the colors of their lighting in any room was a hit, and it ended up spawning a whole new market for smart bulbs. But there’s one ability Hue bulbs have over the competition – they can be controlled by a Control4 home automation system.

That means simple, intuitive and integrated controls of your entire media room’s lighting with a single interface. When it’s time to begin the scary movie festivities, dim the lights around the screen and turn the ones in the back of the room blood red or ghoulish green. On game day, pick the lights that best represent team colors. With thousands of color options to choose from, there’s no limit to how you can customize your spaces.

When Can You Get Dolby Atmos Content?

For months we’ve been excited about the impending release of 4K Ultra HD Blu-rays, in part because we expect great things sonically. But the truth is, Dolby Atmos home video, unlike Ultra HD, is here already. The latest Blu-ray releases like Mad Max: Fury Road and The Hunger Games: Mocking Jay Part 1 are being released with incredible soundtracks – leading many to call them the best-sounding home video releases ever.

But that’s not all. Netflix, which has begun streaming some 4K content, is delivering Atmos soundtracks as well. Similar services like Amazon Prime have also started experimenting with the sound format. Some experts are predicting that this could be the beginning of the end for disc-based home entertainment altogether (but we still love our Blu-rays!).

You’ve Got the Set-up, Now Get the Sound

Getting the best sound out of your home theater requires more than just great components – the entire room has to be tailored to create the ideal atmosphere. There are two steps you need to take for this to happen: specialized acoustic treatments and customized seating.

There’s never been a better time to be an audiophile. Today you can carry virtually endless amounts of music in your pocket, or re-create the sonic wonder of a commercial movie theater in the comfort of your own home. New ways to experience your audio seem to be popping up every day, so it’s not surprising that people are returning to the classic formats – albeit with a modern twist – for true auditory fulfillment. From dedicated, 2-channel listening rooms to high-fidelity speakers in every room, whole house audio systems have never been more popular throughout Atlanta, Georgia. Take a look at how smart audio can enhance your listening experience.

Echo of the Past: 2-Channel Audio

Are you ready for some football? For plenty of Atlanta, Georgia homeowners, football season is the perfect time of year – the pigskins are in play, the end-zones are freshly painted and the Falcons are on the field. But this year, there’s no reason to battle for space in front of the living room TV just to cheer on your favorite team. It’s time to turn that unused space in your home into the ultimate home theater. Deck it out with team colors, a full bar and, of course, top-of-the-line electronics for the perfect man cave escape. Take a look at how you can transform a room in your home into an essential game day viewing room.

Catch the Details the Refs Miss

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: 4K Ultra HD is the wave of the future. There’s no getting around it, you’ll want to invest in the latest technology for your new home theater installation. Take for instance the 75X91C by Sony. Only 15mm thick and sporting a whopping 75 inch display, the only thing clunky about this bad boy is the name. Sony’s biggest (and thinnest) television features native 4K resolution and improved handling of up-scaled HD. That’s just a fancy way of saying the display looks great, even if you’re not watching UHD content. And with a High Dynamic Range firmware update scheduled later this year that will allow the TV to reach even truer colors and deeper blacks, you can bet that the 75X91C will have you seeing details that even the refs miss.

Football in the Morning, Football in the Evening…

Whether you’re stepping out of the house on an errand, packing the car up for summer vacation or simply locking up before bedtime, the security of your home is always on the top of your mind. Home lighting control, coupled with a robust security and surveillance system, can enhance the safety of your property while allowing you to keep an eye on every corner of your spaces. Read on to find out how you can utilize smart lighting to keep your home and property protected throughout the day and night.

Keep Track of Movement With Motion Sensors

There’s no better way to keep track of your property than motion sensors. As movement is detected, the area is flooded with light to give you a crystal clear view of your yard or porch. By integrating your home lighting system with your surveillance cameras, you can have fully-lit, real-time footage streamed directly to your television, computer, tablet or smart phone. Expecting a late-night pizza delivery? Know the second it arrives, and answer the door without getting off your couch via your HD intercom. Motion sensors are the perfect solution for the nighttime snacker who wants to stay safe and aware.

Stay Home Even When You Step Out

As you make your way out of the house, the simple touch of a button on your tablet or smartphone can set your home to “Away” mode. More than just a way to conserve energy by powering down the smart devices not in use, the “Away” mode can be programmed to make it seem as though someone is at home at all times. Lights alternate at intervals throughout the rooms of your house, turning on and off regularly – and based on your actual usage habits – to give the impression the house is in use. By integrating smart shading with your lighting control system, you can create an even more realistic facsimile. At home or away, keep your smart home occupied.

Summer may be blockbuster season, but that doesn’t mean you have to be cooped up in your home theater to enjoy all of the entertainment. Thanks to your home media distribution server, you can move the fun and excitement outside. Enjoy the warm weather and the hottest movies with your friends and family by setting up an outdoor home theater. Rock out to your favorite tunes with landscape audio while keeping track of your other home spaces with surveillance footage streamed to your mobile devices. Read on to find out how smart automation can bring your entertainment to all of your outdoor spaces.

Get in the Game With an Outdoor Home Theater

A home theater can come in virtually any shape or size. Whether you’re looking for a fully immersive, dedicated private cinema or simply a place to enjoy the Braves game with your friends and family, a theater can be customized to reflect your personal style and specifications. But no matter how you plan to utilize your space, you’ll want to make sure your components are optimized for peak performance – whether they’re in or out of your house. Read on to find out how your home theater can transform the way you experience your home entertainment.

Customize Seating for a Great Experience

For many homeowners, a home theater is a place for the whole family to come together for quality time with a nice movie or television show. For others, it’s a place to experience the way their favorite films were meant to be seen and heard. Whatever your preference, the right seating can make all the difference when designing a theater. While a nice, plush couch or recliner may seem like a comfortable option, it may interfere with the sound quality or disrupt the viewing angle. Customized theater seating by Palliser is a comfortable and functional solution for viewing movies and achieving the best possible sound and image in your space. Whether you’re a true film buff or simply looking to augment your family time, customized seating is a great option for any home theater.

Hear More With Dolby Atmos

 From the time you wake up in the morning to the moment you go to bed at night, smart home automation can transform the way you experience your daily life. Open your eyes to a better, more comfortable morning atmosphere, and lay your head down with a sense of added security for a restful night’s sleep by integrating smart technology throughout your home. Read on to discover the ways you can increase the comfort, entertainment and safety of your home with smart automation.

Wake up Refreshed

Imagine: when it’s time to get up in the morning the shades in your bedroom begin to rise automatically. Music begins to filter into your room via your whole home audio system. You wake up refreshed and ready to take on the day ahead. The music follows you down the hall and into the bathroom where you’re greeted with the morning news on your Seura mirror television. Make your way downstairs to the kitchen and gather your family for a healthy breakfast with an HD intercom system. With smart home automation, your morning is simplified and your day gets off to a great start.

Set the Scene for Movie Night

The lights go down and the sound rises. From overhead a projector and screen simultaneously drop from the ceiling. Without getting up from your comfortable, custom-built seat – positioned perfectly for peak surround sound performance – you select the biggest summer blockbuster via your tablet’s touch screen. You hit play, and that’s when the magic happens: you’re transported into a world of cinematic bliss. And you’ve done it all with a few buttons on a single device. A dedicated home theater is one of the most exciting, and most rewarding, applications of smart home technology – one that lets you experience home entertainment like never before.

When you upgrade your home with smart automation, you know that you’ll have unprecedented access to entertainment throughout your house. Home entertainment system distribution is important – no matter what kind of 4K television you have and what kind of surround sound system you install. It’s what puts all of your favorite entertainment at your fingertips. Read on to find out how you can have access to nearly endless entertainment throughout your home. 

Endless Entertainment in Your Home Theater

You’ve got all of the right components in your home theater. You have a beautiful 4K projector with a screen that produces some of the deepest blacks available. You have an excellent in-wall and in-ceiling surround sound system that envelops you in auditory bliss. You even have integrated floor lighting that comes on as the overhead lighting is dimmed, so you can see where you’re going without disrupting the picture. So now all you have to do is choose the right movie.

Stream content directly from online services like Netflix or Amazon Prime, or choose from a vast digital library of your favorite films – all from a central hub in an unused closet or basement. You can even keep a Blu-Ray player in the room, so you won’t have to leave the room to pop a disc in. And if you’re enjoying a midnight movie but decide you’d rather finish it in the comfort of your bed, pause it and pick it up exactly where you left off on your bedroom TV. Home media distribution makes accessing your movies and television fast, fun and easy in every room of your house.

Music Throughout Your House With Whole Home Audio

Whether you are building a dedicated theater or you’re looking for the ultimate party space, customized home lighting control can transform the experience in your home. Automated lighting does more than simply make a room more beautiful, it can totally change the way you live in your house. And while a system that can keep you safe and illuminated is the barest of essentials, it’s a whole lot more fun to integrate the system with your smart entertainment to get a real scope of what it can do. Read on to find out more about how smart lighting can enhance your home.   

Enhance your Home Theater

When building a home theater in your Atlanta, Georgia smart house, you’ll likely want the best gear that money can buy. But you should know, there’s no reason to overspend if you’re not getting top quality. Designing your theater isn’t as simple as picking out the priciest projector and the snazziest seats – it’s about utilizing your space in a way that optimizes your viewing experience. If you want a hands-on visualization of what your personal cinema could be, come help us celebrate the opening of our new Experience Center on June 27. But before you head off, take a look at the ways we can enhance your home theater.

4K is the Wave of the Future

If you want commercial quality movies playing in your residence, you want to go with 4K. Otherwise known as Ultra HD – UHD for short – 4K represents the very best image currently available when it comes to televisions. And that is no joke, Ultra HD image actually sports four times the resolution of regular HD. That means you can sit just a few feet away without seeing any pixels.

As with any new technology, content is currently limited, but many streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Instant Video are offering hours of 4K entertainment. Plus, the Blu-Ray Disc Association has recently released the specs required for Ultra HD discs, so you can expect to see them popping up on the shelves sometime this fall. Experience 4K UHD for yourself in our Buckhead showroom

A Sea of Sound

Smart home automation is revolutionizing the way we interact with our homes and all the devices in it. With so many functionalities to choose from, we can design and install a control system configured to do as much or as little as you want. Because these systems offer scalable solutions, we can easily add control in the future as your Buckhead, GA home and your family change. Come help us celebrate the opening of our new Experience Center on June 27.

Are you new to home automation? Are you considering adding a home theater or media room? If you’d like to experience first-hand how smart technology could change the way you live your life, stop by our new showroom for demos on both indoor and outdoor entertainment options, smart home control systems, and ways to hide technology so that it blends seamlessly with your decor. We’re located at 631 Miami Circle in Atlanta. (link is temporary since site is still under construction)

Have control at your fingertips

Smart home automation makes your world and your family’s world simpler. With control systems like ELAN g! and Control4, you’ll be able to protect your home with a security system, turn on and off lights, adjust the temperature, and control all the media throughout your home. Smart home automation will blend into your lifestyle and allow you to create “scenes” that complement the way you live your life.

Dolby Atmos propels you into the story

If you’ve been dreaming about recreating the experience of going to the movies at home, you’ll want to hear the ultimate sound experience from Dolby Atmos. The 3D speaker configuration used at cinemas across the globe can now be part of your home theater. You’ll feel like you’re a part of the action as the sound comes alive. There are a number of factors that contribute to how your home theater performs, including the size and shape of the room and of course the speaker setup. We invite you to stop by our showroom and experience complete sound immersion.

Technology that won’t disrupt your décor

Want a TV in your master bathroom, but don’t like the way it looks? With a Seura TV Mirror, you only see the TV when you want and a have a mirror that rivals ordinary vanity glass. Seura offers screens for other rooms in your home and are as large as 65 inches. Add elegance to your mirror screen with frames and lighting patterns. Come by our showroom and experience true magic with vanishing TVs.

There are two distinct approaches -- no, philosophies -- to turning on the lights in Douglas and Lina Leonovicz's Old Metairie home.

Lina accomplishes this task the way most of us would: walking over to a nearby wall and flicking a switch.

Douglas, however, will have none of that manual nonsense. He is far more apt to commune with small, rectangular color touchscreens mounted in the kitchen or front hallway.

Pressing an icon here, sliding a finger there, the retired vascular surgeon can prompt anything from a soft glow to a brilliant glare in whichever space he chooses. He is a Jedi of illumination, rendering a 6,000-square-foot home into a playground for his watt-driven whims and wishes.

It's not just mastery of darkness and light that beguiles Leonovicz, 48, who delights in summoning up music no matter where he happens to be, rock standards thundering forth from speakers installed discreetly in the ceilings.

When Larry and Stacey Newcomb moved to Jonesboro, AR and built a new house, Larry knew he wanted flat screen TVs, and Stacey knew she wanted a pool for the kids. What neither of them knew was that they could control their entire home from their iPads and iPhones. Then Ryan Heringer, president of Jonesboro-based Sound Concepts, showed them the IP-based ELAN g! Control System.

"When we first met to discuss the technology that could be incorporated into their new home, the Newcombs simply wanted to know what I could do for their audio/video systems," said Heringer. "So I showed them the ELAN g!Mobile app and how it controls the audio/video, and then continued explaining all the other possibilities with the ELAN g! Control System. By the time I told them they could turn off every light in the house at once from an iPhone or iPad, they didn't want to live without it! And that's what is so great about the g! system — customers love the g!Mobile app and once they see it, they've got to have it."

According to Stacey Newcomb, they call their new home the "Magic House." They use iPads to dim the lights, turn on music, and adjust the heat and air conditioning, while an ELAN TS Series touch screen is set in the walls of nearly every room of the house. Stacey has the system set so all house lamps automatically turn on at 5 p.m. and turn off at 10 p.m., eliminating the need to walk through the house to make sure all the lights are off before retiring for the night.

From a peace of mind perspective, the Newcombs can be assured that their twin daughters are home on time with the ELAN g! Control System, which tells the user which TVs and lights are on, and informs them when people enter or leave the house, and through which door.