Lighting for the Future: Smart Lighting for Residential and Small Commercial Spaces
, 6 min reading time
If you’ve ever visited famous travel destinations like the Las Vegas Strip, New York City’s Times Square, ’Tokyo’s Shibuya Crossing, or Paris’s Champs-Élysées and experienced the nightlife, you've seen what the large-scale application of smart lighting looks like. These cities leverage smart and automated lighting to curate iconic light views that make their skylines breathtaking.
The good thing is that you can also leverage smart lighting in your residential and small commercial spaces to enjoy greater convenience, energy efficiency, and enhanced ambiance. The rapid evolution of lighting technology, especially the transition from incandescent light bulbs to light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs, has made smart lighting more mainstream for both small- and large-scale use.
What Is Smart Lighting?
Smart lighting systems leverage advanced technology such as artificial intelligence (AI), voice recognition, sensor technology, automation, scheduling, and the Internet of Things (IoT) to receive operational instructions remotely from users. A smart lighting system connects and communicates with other smart accessories, such as smart home systems and phones, allowing users to control the system remotely.
Smart lights use connectivity protocols such as Bluetooth, WiFi, Z-Wave, ethernet, and Zigbee. These protocols allow you to fine-tune the lighting system based on:
- Occupancy: Utilize time clocks, occupancy sensors, and energy management systems to modify light levels based on the movements of a room’s occupants.
- Personal tuning: Modify light levels based on the individual liking of occupants by leveraging systems such as lighting controls, dimmers, and bi-level switches.
- Daylight harvesting: Light levels automatically adjust based on the varying levels of natural light as recorded by photosensors and time clocks.
- Institutional tuning: Roll out technology to adjust light levels to satisfy building policies, location-based needs, or a particular group of occupants.
Benefits of Smart Lighting in Residential Spaces
Homeowners enjoy the following perks from installing smart lighting in their residences.
Convenience and Customization
The components of smart lighting systems, including bulbs, switches, voice assistants, and hubs, are deliberately connected to facilitate easy customization of light colors, scheduling, and brightness control. The system integrates with a mobile app, which gives homeowners real-time access and control of light settings, allowing them to customize them from the comfort of their phones.
Energy Efficiency
These three smart lighting technologies help conserve energy by adjusting light levels on an as-needed basis:
- Automation: Smart light automation turns lights off when there are no occupants in a room, or when natural light is enough to light a room up.
- Motion sensors: They detect movement, turn on lights, and turn them off when there’s no movement.
- Adaptive lighting: They automatically adjust the color temperature to fit day and night conditions.
Safety and Security
Smart lighting features like remote-monitoring allow homeowners to turn lights on and off remotely, mimicking occupancy. It confuses and deters opportunistic home intruders who love to target homes when owners are away. Motion-activated lights also deter intruders by activating lights upon detecting movements.
Ambiance and Mood Setting
Smart lights allow homeowners to adjust the light brightness, color temperatures, and scenes to curate the ideal atmosphere for different occasions. Color temperature and brightness levels influence a person's mood, energy, and relaxation levels.
Smart Lighting Solutions for Small Commercial Spaces
Lighting is a substantial cost for commercial buildings, averaging at about $3 to $4 per square foot. Thus, it’s a good thing that smart lighting solutions help businesses optimize energy costs alongside the following benefits.
Improved Operational Efficiency
Automated lighting allows business owners to schedule lights to turn on or off depending on room occupancy. This is convenient for small businesses that don’t normally run 24/7 operations as they’ll have long periods during which spaces are idle.
Enhanced Customer Experience
Business owners can customize smart lighting to create inviting and comfortable environments for customers, be it the lobby or service area. They can review color therapy topics and establish the most appealing color to their customers. Using smart lighting to enhance customer experience is especially valuable for service businesses such as restaurants, bars, and retail.
Flexibility and Scalability
Businesses can easily upgrade their automated lighting systems as their needs expand. These systems have a central smart hub that can appropriately step up or down light settings. Companies can easily adjust light settings or upgrade to a more powerful lighting system with no steep costs.
Integration with Other Systems
Smart lighting systems have a higher connectivity capacity, allowing companies to integrate them with their HVAC system, IoT devices, and security systems. This helps centralize a company’s critical data and further streamlines operational efficiency.
Key Considerations When Implementing Smart Lighting
Whether working on a residential or commercial smart lighting project, consider these factors.
Cost vs. Benefit Analysis
The cost of installing a smart lighting system is higher when retrofitting or upgrading a legacy lighting system and more affordable when installing it in a new building. However, the long-term cost savings in terms of energy savings, operational efficiency, and enhanced security outstrip the initial investment costs.
Compatibility with Existing Systems
Confirm that smart lighting systems work seamlessly with current infrastructure and other smart devices. Confirming compatibility saves you lots of time and money you would use to upgrade other units to make them compatible.
User-Friendly Interfaces
Prioritize smart lighting systems with intuitive controls and apps for managing smart lighting, particularly for non-tech-savvy users. Ensure the central smart hub is easy to operate and well accessible to the right individuals with the right to modify the light setting.
Future-Proofing
Choose systems that are adaptable and upgradeable to accommodate future technological advancements. With the rapid developments in AI, IoT, and machine learning, smart lighting systems will also improve rapidly. To avoid buying new systems after a few upgrades, buy one that can integrate many future updates.
The Future of Smart Lighting Technology
Any tech-based system either improves or is replaced with a better version. For smart lighting technologies, these trends will herald the most substantial changes:
- AI-driven lighting: As AI improves, more smart lighting systems will use it to read color temperatures more accurately and adjust accordingly.
- Voice-controlled systems: Smart lighting systems will incorporate more advanced voice systems that can recognize multiple voices.
- Advanced sensors: Better sensor technology will empower smart light systems to detect slight movements across larger areas accurately.
- Data analytics: Smart systems will leverage AI to learn from previous data and also integrate future insights to predict lighting conditions in particular rooms or spaces more accurately.
- Personalized and adaptive lighting: AI and data analytics will pave the way for more advanced personalization and adaptive lighting features.
- Enhance accessibility of smart lighting: As smart lighting goes mainstream, fundamental accessories like smart LEDs are becoming more affordable to the general population.
Count on ULE Group for Customized Smart Lighting Solutions
Contact us today, and let us help you find the ideal smart lighting solution for your home or small business.