The Dallas design community has another first to boast about: last week The Dallas Market Center opened the first smart home showroom in North America. It is full of life-changing technology that can make anyone’s life a little bit easier – even this tech challenged Lifestylist® can’t wait to incorporate some of it in her Oak Cliff home.
Smart home technology has been around for decades now. After attending the opening of the Smarter Living by Design Showroom and listening to an esteemed panel of experts talk about what this means for today’s homeowners, I can’t imagine buying a new home without incorporating at least some of these new products and services in it. Panel moderator Leslie Carothers, a marketing expert to the home and design industries, asked the questions we all were curious about, including when to bring in integrator to your project to make sure everything works together.
Leslie shared the results of a study that Coldwell Banker just did with CNet, and they found that homes that incorporated smart home technology sold two times faster than a traditionally built home. That alone is a great reason to invest in this!
HomeTronics, a Dallas based custom electronics integrator coordinated the development of this showroom. We are so fortunate to have a leader in this field based right here in Dallas. As a Lifestylist, the first thing we noticed when walking through the showroom was the clean, minimal design that was shown throughout the showroom — the days of needing a million remotes, boxes, and wires to make everything work are gone. Now by using a platform like Crestron, your entire home can be programmed and customized to your lifestyle. A complete experience can happen in one click or swipe. No more complicated instructions are needed — the right integration firm can make the entire process seamless. And what was really interesting is that they can make some items that aren’t equipped with smart technology “smart” and work with the other items in your home. Their mission is “ease of use for the end user” — it’s that simple and that complicated at the same time.
Remember when we were lucky to have a connection in a room where the television might go when we bought a home, and the wiring package was the same in every house? A tip that so many of us overlook is that even though many of today’s electronics can work with wifi, to get the best experience being hardwired is preferred. It made sense — it feels like I am continually rebooting my router. That is another reason thinking about all of your needs and wishes before you start building, or when you are touring a home to buy is so important. Plus technology is changing so quickly you want to make sure you are purchasing a home with a system that functions and has the power that your needs will demand.
Samsung is another partner in the showroom, and it was interesting to hear about how they have been the number one television manufacturer for 14 years. This allows them to design appliances and electronics where a smart home and smart TV speak and work together. They also have Frame TV that I am lusting after. It’s a television that indeed can turn into a work of art as it has a motion detector, so it turns off when no one is around, and an ambient mode that can make your television hide in plain sight.
Chefs like Nikky Phinyawatana and people who love to cook are embracing smart technology in their homesThe kitchen that they have in the showroom shows off their appliance technology as well – a refrigerator that can answer the phone for you or play your favorite Pandora channel, and has a camera in it so you can tell before you get off of your couch if there are any cold bottles of beer in it.
You can preheat your electric oven using your phone when you are waiting in the carpool lane, and look up recipes that tell you where to place what you are making in your oven and for how long for optimum results.
The Dallas Market Center plans on using this space as an incubator and will be open daily to designers and retail buyers and will hold frequent seminars and special events to educate them on this rapidly changing field. Market is only open to the trade, so be sure and ask your builder and designer if they are utilizing this fantastic new tool.
