The idea of having a “smart home” can sound as foreign and complicated as the concept of self-driving cars or cloud computing — but it doesn’t have to be that convoluted. In fact, if you take things one step at a time, it’s easy to turn an existing home into a trendy, top of the line smart home with just a few easy steps.

If you’re in the process of updating your home via repairs, remodels, or even a fresh coat of paint, here are some suggestions for the best ways to take your boring old “dumb home” and turn it into a cutting-edge, sci-fi-esque, technologically driven paradise while you’re busy making changes.

Update What Needs to Be Improved

Before you start investing in new technology purchases, it’s important to consider what updates you just want versus what would genuinely help. For instance, on the one hand, if you’re looking into getting a smart washing machine but you already have an excellent system that uses your current machine’s timer settings, you may not need to get a new model.

If a refrigerator with a built-in smart assistant is outside your budget, there are plenty of options to keep you organized, such as a large-scale DIY fridge magnet that doubles as a menu planner and shopping list. Pick non-toxic, magnetized chalkboard paint to go one step further and create a board that hangs on your fridge door. Is your fridge older but still in working condition?  Paint a section of the door itself for a truly built-in chalkboard.

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Increase Your Smart Home’s Reach

It’s also important to consider your home’s layout. Even if you already have a home assistant, you may want to get another one in order to extend the reach of your smartphone. You can often get smaller models, like a Google Home Mini or an Echo Dot, to increase your home network for pennies on the dollar.

You can station these additional bases in offices, living rooms, and kitchens. You can even pop one in the entryway so you can ask Google to assess your travel time as you get ready to hit the road.

Remember, Smart Isn’t Just Techie

Remember, a smart home doesn’t simply mean it’s filled with meaningless tech. It means you’ve considered each element of your living space and made sure it was optimized, efficient, environmentally-friendly, and so on.

For instance, one item that may be miles away from your mind when thinking of smart home improvements is a bidet. Bidets are often seen as European luxuries, especially to Americans who don’t use them very often. However, installing a bidet in your bathroom can provide a slew of different benefits.

It provides a more efficient and gentler option than toilet paper, and it avoids the huge waste of flushing so much paper down the drain — which makes it an efficient, eco-friendly option. Just make sure to establish a proper understanding of how to use your bidet so that you don’t waste water.

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Wise Up on Your Lighting

Another option to help your house become both smarter and more efficient is to update your interior lighting. Along with installing energy-efficient LED lighting, consider getting smart light bulbs and smart light switches and other electrical appliances product source.

These can give you more control over how bright your lights are as well as when they’re turned on and off. It even gives you the option to turn them off remotely if you leave the house and realize you accidentally left the lights on.

Consider Your Environment

Another easy smart home improvement is installing a smart thermostat. While you can get fairly far by setting up a schedule on an old school thermostat, a smart thermostat gives you perpetual and full control over your home’s heating and cooling.

It doesn’t matter if you’re coming home from a few hours spent at the office or flying home from a week away in the Bahamas, you can always make sure that the temperature remains efficiently low while you’re away and then crank it up to more comfortable levels via your smartphone before you arrive back home.

Secure the Premises

When it comes to smart homes, one item that tends to hog the spotlight is smart home security. While this used to be embodied by installing a simple camera above your door, at this point the concept of smart home security has developed all-new abilities.

For instance, along with security cameras, you can now get doorbell cameras that can allow you to communicate with visitors even when you’re not home. In addition, smart door locks enable you to check if your doors are locked and even lock them remotely while you’re away from home. Avoiding the need to turn around and head back home just to check if the door s are locked is enough of a reason to invest in a smart home all on its own.

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Clean Smarter

Finally, while you’re upgrading things, you may want to hire a new cleaning staff — in the form of smart home cleaning technology. Autonomous robotic vacuum cleaners, like a Roomba or a Roborock, can help you maintain spotless floors.

In addition, that smart laundry machine is still an option, and you can even get a smart trash can that both opens automatically and has a suction option on the floor to avoid the need for broom pans. While it’s often overshadowed by the flashier items like smart security and smart light bulbs, smart home cleaning tech has gotten to the point where it’s difficult to ignore the benefits.

Shifting to a Smarter Home

Whether you’re installing smart lighting, spreading your smart home assistant network throughout your house, or picking up a Roomba to keep those floors sparkly clean, there are many, many ways to turn an existing home into a cutting-edge technological paradise.

However, it’s important to keep in mind those wants versus the needs. If you start purchasing every smart home gadget you can find, you’ll run up a massive bill in no time. After all, the internet of things (IoT) industry is growing at breakneck speeds, and new smart gadgets are coming out all the time. If you focus on improving your living space in affordable, effective ways, though, you can create an effective, trendy smart home at a very affordable cost.

Author Bio:

Magnolia Potter is a blogger from the Pacific Northwest. She loves writing on a variety of topics from technology to lifestyle. When she isn’t writing you can find her traveling far and wide or reading a good book.

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