Home Security

Convenient Smart Home Upgrades To Help Make Your Home More Efficient

By Ring on March 1, 2023

When your days are filled with work meetings, family dinners, trips to soccer practice, and late-night visits to the gym, you’re always looking for ways to save a little time. And upgrading your home with smart home devices is one of the best ways to do so. With one click of a button on your phone, you can turn on the lights, change the temperature, unlock your front door, and more — and you can even save energy in the process.

Whether you’re new to smart home devices or looking for extra ways to simplify your day-to-day routine, these upgrades can transform how you use your home.

6 Ways To Modernize Your Home With Smart Devices

Bringing your home into the 21st century doesn’t require a total gut job and renovation. After a quick trip to the store or an online shopping session, you can bring home the latest gadgets and get everything set up within a few days. Here are six simple ways to help automate your comfort, energy usage, and even your dinner routine.

Install Smart Thermostats

Arriving home on a snowy night knowing you’re about to be greeted by a rush of warm air is one of the best feelings — until you remember that you forgot to adjust your thermostat that morning. Now, you have to bundle up and wait for the temperature to rise.

With a smart thermostat, you don’t have to worry about setting the right temperature or checking the weather forecast every few days. Instead, you can set automations for the heat or air conditioning to kick on or off at certain times — like when you leave for work or the kids arrive home from school. And if the weather unexpectedly changes while you’re on vacation or your kiddos get released early for a snow day, you can check your home’s temperature from your phone and adjust accordingly.

Some smart thermostats can even detect when your home is empty and automatically adjust the temperature, which means you can save money without doing anything. And if you’re still looking for ways to lower your utility bills, you can look at data about your energy usage or even create zones in your home, so you only heat or cool the areas you’re in.

Smart thermostats may be high-tech, but they don’t require an electrician to install. Most homeowners can do it themselves, but you can also book a professional to make the process even easier.

Switch to Smart Locks

Fumbling with your house key every time you arrive can slow you down at the most inopportune times. Even worse, you might realize you misplaced your key altogether — leaving you to decide whether to climb through a tiny window or call a locksmith for an emergency visit.

With a smart lock, you can get rid of your keys completely and use a code, fingerprint, or phone to unlock the door. And if family members, construction workers, or housesitters need to get in while you’re gone, you don’t have to risk your home security by leaving a spare key under the doormat. You can assign them a unique code or use your phone to open the door when they arrive.

Like most other devices in your smart home package, you can install locks yourself with a few tools. And depending on the lock you choose, you may even be able to connect it to your home security system.

Swap Your Old Bulbs and Fixtures for Smart Lighting

If you spend five minutes each night before bed walking around the house just so you can turn every light off — and still end up forgetting that one in the basement or garage — it may be time to embrace smart light bulbs. Instead of flipping switches, you can control and dim lights from your phone or set automations to turn them on and off at set times. That means you never have to arrive home to a dark house or get out of bed when you realize you forgot to leave a light on for your teenager who’s coming home late.

You can also buy smart outdoor lighting, like path lights and spotlights, and create automations through your phone to keep your home well-lit at night.

Automate Your Cooking With Smart Kitchen Appliances

If you search for “smart kitchen appliances” on your favorite online retailer, you’ll find seemingly endless options — from automatic tea kettles to self-warming mugs. But with these devices, you can actually automate your meal routines and get food on the table faster:

Air fryers: While you’re changing into sweatpants after a long day at work, you can tell your phone or voice assistant to set the air fryer to a specific temperature. Once you slide in a tray of tater tots or veggies, you can set a timer, head into the living room to watch the news, and get an alert on your phone when it’s done.

Pressure cookers: Whether you’re cooking up a big batch of chicken noodle soup or beef ragu, you can use your phone to set cooking temperatures, check your meal’s progress, and release the pressure once it’s perfectly cooked.

Refrigerators: If your little ones like to stand in front of the open refrigerator door pondering their choices for several minutes — and leave the door wide open once they find what they’re looking for — you should consider a smart refrigerator. These devices can send alerts when the door is open, show you what’s inside without actually opening the door, and let you set temperatures from your phone.

Ranges and range hoods: With a smart range and hood combo, you can preheat the oven and set timers, turn on the ventilation fan, and even see if you left a burner on — all from your phone.

Simplify Home Automation With a Smart Home Hub

Once you have a home filled with smart home upgrades from different manufacturers, you might have a dozen apps to control everything. That’s where smart home hubs come in — they connect some or all of the devices in your smart home package so that you can control them from a single place.

Once you set up your hub, you can use voice control to turn on the living room lights, lock the front door, set the second-floor thermostat to 75 degrees, and more. Just be sure to consider the devices you already have — and the ones you plan to buy — to ensure they’re compatible with your chosen hub.

Buy a Smart Home Security System

Investing in a smart home security system is a great way to make your home more efficient and improve its security. You can give your home an extra layer of protection with a DIY system. Even our DIY systems allow you to control every component through the Ring App. With the app, you can arm and disarm your entire Ring Alarm System from anywhere and get real-time alerts when it’s triggered.