Every decade or so, there is a new product that seems so extravagant and so un-necessary, that it is deemed a toy for the rich, or a play-thing of the super-techy. There was a time that a smart phone was a luxury. iPads and tablets were only for the bleeding edge tech crowd. Heck, there was even a time when automatic car windows were luxurious upgrade that only the most well-to-do would bother to splurge on (With car windows, it's gotten so advanced, we don't even want to have to hold the button anymore).

With the speed of advancements in Smart Home technology, automated shades and blinds are rapidly transitioning from the world of dreams and fantasy, to the world of reality, and there are MANY very good reasons for this.

Reason #1: PRICE
Automated shades have historically been more expensive than manual... but guess what??? They still are...

That being said, Lutron's newest line of Serena Shades are the least expensive they've ever been. But Serena Shades by Lutron still comes with the super high quality we've all come to expect from Lutron, plus they still integrate with Lutron's full line of smart home apps and components. And they are totally wireless, so no expensive remodeling to pull wire required!

Reason 3: Fashion AND Function! Lutron shades come with a HUGE selection of available styles and fabrics. Don't take my word for it, head over to Lutron Fabrics to check out the full line up. These shades are not just a technological marvel, but they will really enhance the look and feel of your home at the same time. Plus, they move in absolute perfect precision, giving your space a polished, clean elegant look, all the time. Check it out:

Back when your entire home was lit with incandescent light bulbs, you probably took for granted a particular beautiful effect that comes naturally to incandescence.. The warm dimming effect. Essentially, when an incandescent bulb is dimmed, the filament of the bulb cools down.

This cooling effect actually has a very pronounced impact on the quality of the light. Not only does the light get dimmer, but the color of the light begins to appear warmer...

It just so happens that, when used with incandescent light bulbs, this warming effect mirrored the color output that our own bodies best respond to, the color outputs of the sun.

When the sun begins to rise each morning, the Earth's atmosphere filters the colors or the sun, creating a rich warm glow all around us. As the sun rises in the sky, the colors begin to shift more towards the blues, and crisper whites of midday. In the evening, the sun recedes, and the warmer lights return.

People's use of dimmers used to match this pattern (known as a circadian rhythm). It is only natural, when the exterior light is at its brightest, for people to brighten their interior lighting all the way up to compensate. Likewise, in the evenings, people will generally set a more mellow mood by dimming, and the old incandescent bulbs would follow something of an ad-hoc circadian pattern.

Fast forward to the more energy aware bulbs of today and we no longer have the happy accident of natural color shift in bulbs. Fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) in residential settings are rarely dimmed, and often come in very bluish color temperatures. LEDs have made great strides, but until recently only came in fixed color temperatures. This is a HUGE improvement over the ultra-white LEDs, and non-dimmable CFLs, but it's still not quite good enough.

With the advent of circadian lighting, many have found the solution they desire. Brands like Ketra have beautiful lighting systems that mirror the sun's light precisely, all based on your latitude and longitude. And while these systems are extremely powerful, many remain priced out of these types of whole home solutions.

This is where Dim-To-Warm technology comes in. A dim to warm LED bulb automatically replicates the beautiful dimming quality of the original incandescent bulb, all while retaining the long life and energy efficiency of an LED.

So, what is this #1 reason for warm-dimming bulbs? Warm dimming technology helps create a calming, relaxing environment in your home at the end of a long day, and this environment links your state of mind to your internal bodies clock. Try putting your phone away for the night, and letting your mind decompress in the evening. And let Warm Dimming technology help set the right mood. Studies by Harvard show that getting your mind, and lighting right for the evening can help reduce stress, help you sleep better, and increase productivity during the day.
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Reach out to our team at Paratus Service Group to implement your own warm dimming solution today, for a fraction of the cost of the whole-home systems. In order to get the most out of your Warm Dim technology, make sure you have a quality bulb, a compatible dimmer, and scene selectors to get your lighting levels exactly where they need to be!

So, you're buying light bulbs, or specifying the lighting for a new home, and this term keeps popping up... CRI. What exactly is it, and why is it so important anyway? CRI stands for Color Rendering Index, and you simply cannot overstate how important CRI can be on the overall look of a space.
Have you ever walked through the paint department of your local hardware store, and noticed how they have a small booth, or demo area, with different light sources for you to hold paint swatches under? Well, that's to demonstrate CRI. Every artificial light source does a different job of accurately showing the colors around it. We had it pretty good in the days of incandescent light bulbs, which have a CRI of 100, a perfect score!
However, large energy consumption and short life spans have rendered incandescent bulbs dinosaurs, and their days are definitely numbered. For a long time, this left us in the unhealthy and unattractive world of low-CRI. If you've ever walked through an older parking garage at night, you've seen the AWFUL yellowish coloring rendering of high pressure sodium lighting, which has a lowly CRI of around 25. Parking lots can do better with blueish metal halide bulbs, usually with a CRI around 60. In recent years, the CRI of fluorescent tubes have gotten much better, well into the 80s.
With modern LED technology, most home-owners can find good quality LED bulbs with a CRI of 90+. At Mojo Smart Home, we always recommend high CRI, good quality bulbs, that will bring out your finishes, your art work, your decor, and let you see your home in the way it was always meant to be seen.