Cooling your home can be expensive, even with a modern and efficient air conditioning system. If you want to save money, you should aim to prevent your home from getting too hot in the first place.
That’s exactly what smart blinds do so well.
Smart blinds are what your home is missing
Smart blinds are little more than motorized window coverings that can be automated using a smart home platform like Home Assistant or proprietary systems from Apple, Google, Amazon, and more. At their most basic level, they allow you to raise and lower the blinds using the push of a button or a voice command.
This can have all sorts of benefits, from helping you wake up in the morning to providing privacy from neighbors at night. Automations can raise and lower the blinds for you, or you can use a smart speaker or smartphone to do so manually. Many smart blinds also come with a dedicated remote or buttons on the unit.
Ben Lovejoy / How-To Geek
Blinds can be grouped together like other smart home devices. If you have several windows in your living room and you set your blinds up properly within your platform of choice, issuing a simple command like “close the living room blinds” should close all relevant blinds.
But blinds aren’t just a way to control light or visibility; they’re also one of the best ways to protect your home from the sun. While you might want to maximize how much sun gets into certain areas in the winter for a bit of free heating, the opposite is true in the summer. This is especially true for rooms that receive the full extent of the midday and afternoon sun.
How automating window coverings can save you money
Blocking out the sun reduces the “greenhouse effect” that happens inside your home by blocking as much UV light as possible. For some rooms, blinds are not only essential for preventing excessive warming but also for allowing you to spend time in them during the hottest hours of the day.
With a smart home, you can automate this process using a number of data points. The easiest is to lower the blinds during the hottest hours of the day. Where I live, that’s a broad block of time between 11 am and 5 pm during the hottest months.
But not all days are sunny and warm, and using a simple time block doesn’t always make sense. In this case, you can get a bit more specific and use external sources (like the weather forecast) or internal sensor readings (primarily the temperature in the room)—or a combination of the two—to intelligently lower the blinds.
Ben Lovejoy / How-To Geek
How you do this depends entirely on your smart home platform of choice. Home Assistant has many weather plugins that you can use in your automations, whereas any alternative platforms should allow for simple temperature-based automations.
You can even set up an automation to open the blinds again as long as certain conditions are met, like the UV index or room temperature being below a certain threshold. Part of the “fun” of automating your smart home is coming up with a method that works for you.
The same trick can also work in winter to preserve heat, though curtains are generally seen as better insulators. Thankfully, with a gadget like the SwitchBot Curtain robot, you can automate those too.
- Brand
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SwitchBot
- Dimensions
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9.45 x 2.36 x 2.36 in
SwitchBot’s Curtain Rod 3 automates the simple task of opening and closing your curtain through SwitchBot’s dedicated app. The smart device can be activated virtually anywhere, allowing you to regulate your home’s environment to reduce energy costs.
Finding the right blinds can be a challenge
Speaking from experience, finding the right blinds can be quite a journey. I’ve been looking for the “perfect” blinds for a long time, and my quest has so far not been fruitful. That said, I’ve learned quite a bit over the last few years of off-and-on hunting.
SmartWings is frequently quoted as being one of the best choices on the market (but they’re not available where I live). They’re more affordable than some of the pricier options, while enjoying a good reputation for quality at this price point. Another option is Hunter Douglas (also sold as Luxaflex in many other parts of the world), which exists in a more premium price bracket.
Lutron Caséta makes the blinds that you pick when money is no object. At the other end of the price spectrum, IKEA once had the Fyrtur range of motorized smart blinds (pictured below), but they disappeared from sale a few years ago and have yet to reappear.
If you’re feeling brave and want budget bespoke smart blinds, there is no shortage of manufacturers offering made-to-order window coverings on marketplaces like AliExpress and Alibaba. I wouldn’t even consider these were it not for the many Reddit discussions and happy customers that have me seriously considering it as an option.
Depending on what you go for, you may have a choice of power options. Many use a simple rechargeable battery that you have to remove and recharge. Solar charging is also an option on some models, via a solar panel that sticks to the window. It’s usually only the higher-end options that offer a direct connection to mains power (which is probably more hassle than it’s worth for most people anyway).
Converting your dumb blinds is also an option
If you already have blinds installed, you may be able to retrofit them with a motorized smart system. Products like the SwitchBot Blind Tilt ($70) use Bluetooth or Matter to allow you to raise, lower, and tilt compatible blinds, plus they come with a solar panel and battery. The Aqara Roller Shade Driver E1 ($120) is another option that uses Zigbee.
The vast majority of smart blinds that I’ve come across during my search have had offline control, which means they connect using Bluetooth, a mesh network like Zigbee, or plain old Wi-Fi.
Make sure you’re using a local smart home platform like Home Assistant so you’re not dependent on the internet for local operations.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
