The holiday season puts your smart home systems to the test. Between hosting family gatherings, managing guest rooms, and creating festive ambiance throughout your home, your automation technology handles more simultaneous demands than any other time of year. A lighting scene that fails during your holiday party or an entertainment system that won't cooperate when guests arrive can derail even the best-planned celebration.

Now is the time to ensure everything is running in top form. Whether you're preparing your Maine home for extended family visits or getting your second home ready for seasonal stays, a pre-holiday system check and some smart upgrades will give you the peace of mind to focus on what matters: enjoying time with loved ones.

Luxury design lives in the details, and lighting is one of the most powerful. Sightlines, textures, and color all change under the right beam spread and color temperature. That’s why fixture selection belongs early in the design process, right alongside millwork, finishes, and furniture plans.

Lutron’s fixtures give you the tools to do it well: precise optics for clean task light, smooth dimming and color control, and finishes that disappear or make a statement, plus native compatibility with Lutron control systems for reliable scenes and schedules. In the sections that follow, you’ll find a practical, room-by-room framework for specifying fixtures that elevate the look and feel of any project. Let’s dive in!

Maine's crisp fall air signals the end of outdoor entertaining and the start of cozy indoor gatherings. As you trade deck parties for game-day viewing and holiday hosting, your media room becomes the heart of home entertainment.

Football season is here, holiday parties are on the horizon, and those long winter movie nights aren't far behind. Fall is the perfect time to assess your media room setup and make upgrades that will enhance every gathering from now through spring. Whether hosting the big game or settling in for a holiday classic, these key improvements will transform your space into the ultimate entertainment destination.

There was a time when window treatments were primarily used to keep the sun out during the day and maintain a private dwelling at night. Today, they play a key role in a home’s aesthetics, elevating its beauty and design.

Blackout shades bring darkness to bedrooms. Elegant draperies create a sense of timelessness. Horizontal sheer blinds combine the beauty of delicate fabric with the blind’s precise control of sunlight.

With the advent of motorized shades, their functionality grew exponentially, protecting the home’s interior and reducing energy usage while managing natural light’s beauty. 

Here, we’ll explore how architects are using today’s shading technology and advanced design to set the mood, enhance privacy, and define the parameters of natural light.

Today's homeowners expect smart features when building new or undertaking major renovations. Whether it's lighting that adjusts throughout the day, motorized shades that respond to the sun, or entertainment systems that blend seamlessly into the design, smart technology has moved from luxury to standard expectation.

The good news is that planning smart home infrastructure from the architectural phase makes everything easier, more integrated, and significantly less expensive than retrofitting later. When you design with technology in mind from the start, installations become cleaner, functionality improves, and your clients get the seamless experience they're looking for.

Here are five essential considerations that will set your architectural projects up for smart home success and keep your beautiful designs intact.

Landscape lighting used to mostly highlight a few trees and provide safe passage. Today, it’s about so much more. The latest technology creates stunning illumination that lets you, your friends, and your family enjoy outdoor areas well after sunset. In fact, the most challenging part may be getting your guests to go home. 

Here, we’ll explore today’s strategic outdoor lighting and how to make the most of your outdoor space after dark.

When perfect summer weather arrives, there's something magical about extending your living space beyond four walls. Instead of retreating indoors after sunset or when guests visit, your backyard becomes an entertainment hub where movies, music, and ambiance blend seamlessly with the natural beauty around you.

Smart Home Solutions has helped scores of homeowners transform ordinary outdoor spaces into extraordinary entertainment destinations. We know what works in our unique coastal climate, and we've seen how the right outdoor AV setup reshapes how families connect with their homes and each other.

Lighting has become an essential design feature, as important to a home's overall aesthetics as the choice in color, furnishings, and style. As architects embrace these changing dynamics, they've recognized how beautiful lighting fixtures can transform a space, not only by the layers of light they add but by their shape, material, and radiance. 

When carefully selected and installed, the right lighting fixtures define a space, integrating seamlessly into Cape Cod, Colonial, Tudor, or Greek Revival architecture. As Frank Lloyd Wright said, "More and more, so it seems to me, light is the beautifier of the building." 

Here, we'll explore how today's lighting fixtures complement architectural designs. 

Living in Coastal Maine has its perks, but outdated shades and lighting? Not so much. With busy schedules, homeowners want their spaces to be both functional and visually stunning. Old-school window treatments and basic lighting can detract from your home's charm and fall short of today's smart technology. This post explores how switching to Lutron can breathe new life into your space, making it more comfortable, stylish, and easier to manage.

If you’ve delved into the immense sea known as home automation or smart home living, you’ve undoubtedly come across the name “Lutron.” What started as the invention of the first solid-state dimmer in 1961 grew into the world's most advanced lighting and control system. 

Today, you’ll find Lutron products, from motorized shades to handcrafted controls and brilliant illumination, in places like the White House, Windsor Castle, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West, a UNESCO World Heritage site. 

In 2011, Lutron HomeWorks QS entered the market, a control system that went far beyond lighting. Integrating other systems like shades, HVAC, audio/video, and security, homeowners experienced seamless, customized control of their home’s environment. 

In 2019, their next-generation whole-home solution, HomeWorks QSX, launched, increasing and enhancing its processing power. Large luxury homes with complex home automation systems can now rely on Lutron’s flagship whole-home control system to make life easier, more beautiful, and more enjoyable. 

Let’s explore the possibilities.

Lutron's Ketra offers one of the world's most advanced LED lighting systems. With dozens of patents to their name, they reinvented how we illuminate our homes.

Tunable, full-spectrum LED lighting gives us 17 million colors to brighten our homes, changeable with the touch of a button or voice command. Natural light technology accurately mimics changing daylight as it transforms our lights from the blue glow of dawn to the bright white of midday before settling into the soft orange-red hue of a setting sun. This system brings daylight indoors and enhances our well-being by synchronizing our internal time clocks set to light and darkness. 

Ketra's Vibrancy, the first of its kind, uses tunable white light to bring out the best features in paintings, textures, and fine artwork, completely changing a person's perception. Natural Dimming was also the first of its kind—LED illumination that warms naturally as it dims.

To say it revolutionized home lighting is an understatement. 

Because of its tremendous power and beauty, our lighting design and automation experts at SmartHome Solutions, Inc., are commonly asked about installing it in existing homes. Is it only available for new builds, or can it be retrofitted?

Because of the number of people concerned about this potential issue, we thought it was time to address it in writing. Here, then, lies the answer to the possibility of integrating Ketra lighting into your home.

Homeowners will notice the layout, materials, and design in any impactful architectural design. But when architects add functional luxury lighting fixtures, their designs suddenly achieve a new aesthetic level. For architects in Winnipesaukee, NH, and Southern Maine, Lutron light fixtures are the perfect addition to home designs, providing style, technology, and the flexibility to elevate any designer project. Continue reading to learn more about adding smart lighting and Lutron fixtures to home builds.

For many people, purchasing a home with built-in smart home automation in Southern Maine is one of the make-or-break deals on their list. But what happens if you get into your new home and find the pre-installed Lutron system you’ve inherited is old and outdated? Or maybe it’s a newer system not operating at peak performance. 

When this occurs, it’s essential to have a professional assess the situation. With today’s technology, upgrading the system with a Lutron takeover to meet modern smart home standards is often feasible. This route enables you to enhance the system’s functionality while preserving the original investment.

Let’s explore what it takes to optimize your smart home system in Lake Winnipesaukee, NH.

When it comes to maintaining comfort and energy efficiency in your Portland, ME, home throughout the year, it doesn’t get much better than motorized blinds. They can adjust automatically based on your schedule, lifestyle, or time of day and can be controlled otherwise at the press of a button, offering plenty of convenience and functionality. Let’s take a closer look at the seasonal benefits of motorized blinds. 

Lifelike. It’s something many have come to appreciate and expect as technology leads you into an experience. Whether immersed in an enchanting movie in your home theater or relaxing to your favorite tunes in the living room, you want to experience your media as it was meant to be heard—as the creator intended.

Great music transports you beyond your home in Kennebunkport, ME. You’re part of the action, in the recording studio, at the live concert, or on a windswept beach walking along a desolate shoreline. You’ve become a part of the storyline.

Achieving this level of immersion requires high-resolution audio that fills a space. The best way to attain this degree of oneness is through a surround sound system, specifically spatial audio. 

Here, we’ll explore this innovative technology and how it’s transforming the way you experience sound in Southern Maine.