A few years ago, conversations about luxury homes often started with questions about where to place the speakers. Today, homeowners are increasingly asking how their homes can connect lighting, entertainment, climate control, security and other everyday functions into one seamless experience.
Great decor and attention to design still matter, but these days there are other things on a homeowner's mind as well.
We've walked into homes with four separate remotes on the coffee table and a tablet nobody could get to hold onto a Wi-Fi connection. Those clients usually end up asking for fewer systems, not more, once they've lived with the clutter for a while.
Here are all the features we're seeing requested most, along with a few notes on where they tend to go wrong.
Automation That Learns On Its Own
Early automation setups needed constant instruction: turn this fan on, dim that light, lock the door at 11 p.m. These days, automation means the devices are watching and learning your patterns specific to you. Modern smart-home systems can use schedules, sensors and user preferences to automate routines based on how a household uses its spaces. A client's automation system noticed that the kitchen lights never got used before 7 a.m. on weekends but almost always did on weekdays. It adjusted accordingly. They didn't have to programme that in. It noticed on its own.
Lighting, climate, security, entertainment, curtains and energy use can all sit under the same learning layer eventually. You keep full control throughout and just tend to use it less as the weeks go on.
Lighting Scenes and Why It's Alright to Get Them 'Wrong'
There are only a handful of possible lighting scenes: wake-up, party, reading, movie night, vacation mode. In practice, however, most households tend to just stick to two or three of these and ignore the rest. What is important is to make sure the right scene is activated automatically at the right moment, usually tied to a voice command or a schedule.
A client of ours entirely scrapped his "party mode" after six months because his idea of a party changed. The rest of the scenes stayed as is. These things either get used or they don't and there's no predicting which in advance.
Curtains with Brains
Motorised curtains is a fairly common request among people setting up automation in their houses. They're close to standard now on larger installs.
However, the novelty wears off after a week or two and what's left is fairly ordinary: less sun damage on furniture and nobody having to walk across a cold marble floor at 6 a.m. to close them by hand.
While it might sound simple, there's a lot to consider during installation. For example, if the curtains are made of a heavier fabric, their weight needs to be factored in before commissioning, else we might face unforeseen situations like a jammed curtain track.
Home Theatres Split Three Ways
There isn't one right answer here.
Some clients want the full build: a dedicated dark room, 4K or 8K projection, Dolby Atmos, proper acoustic panelling, recliners.
Others prefer a compact media room with a large display or projector, surround sound and comfortable seating without dedicating an entire room to a cinema.
A fair number skip the dedicated room entirely and put speakers in the ceiling of the living room instead, with a display that disappears when it isn't in use. We've had all three requested inside the same house, for different family members on different floors.
LED Walls for Rooms That Never Get Properly Dark
Projectors perform best in dark rooms, while a lot of newer homes are built with exactly the opposite in mind: floor-to-ceiling glass, open sightlines, very little to block daylight. LED walls have become the practical fix for that, holding their brightness and colour even with the sun coming in sideways at dusk.
They also sit flush against a wall in a way that reads as architecture rather than equipment, which matters more to some clients than the picture quality itself.
Speakers People Actually Want to See
Most people still picture a black or silver box with a volume knob when they think of a speaker. Devialet doesn't fit that picture and clients often mistake it for a decor object before anyone tells them what it is. We know a client who kept hers in the entrance hall rather than the living room, on a plinth, because she wanted it seen before anything else in the house.
Rooms Built for Nothing But Listening
Dedicated listening rooms are also becoming an appealing feature for homeowners who want to make music the focus of a particular space, whether that means vinyl, high-resolution streaming or both. One client had us mark the exact floor position for each speaker with tape before the furniture went in and wouldn't let the installers move an inch off it. Not everyone goes that far. Some are only a few months into building a record collection and just want a decent turntable and a pair of speakers that don't embarrass them. Either way, we're building more of these rooms each year than we were five years ago.
Security Folded Into Everything Else
Smart locks, video doorbells and camera systems used to be sold as their own category. Now they sit on the same platform as lighting and climate, which means an alert on a phone can trigger a light coming on automatically, or a door unlocking remotely for someone who's arrived early. Most of this hardware has existed for years. What's changed is that it finally talks to the rest of the house.
Audio That Doesn't Stay in One Room
Multi-room audio has moved well past the living room speaker pair. We've set up a Spotify playlist running by a pool deck, a podcast on a terrace during a barbecue and something quieter in a study, all at once, without a volume drop between rooms. Controlling it from a phone or a voice assistant is standard now. The harder part is usually acoustic, working out how a kitchen with hard surfaces and a lounge with soft furnishings can both sound right off the same system.
Few Apps, Fewer Headaches
The households that seem happiest with their setups did not use four separate apps in the first place. You can use only a few interfaces to run lighting, audio, security and climate together, removing most of the friction that used to make smart homes feel like more work than they saved. None of it holds up without decent network infrastructure underneath though and that's where we need to avoid cutting any corners.
At Ooberpad, most of our work is figuring out which of these systems are actually worth installing in a given home, rather than fitting everything on the list regardless of whether it gets used. If you're planning an overhaul, or starting from scratch, get in touch with our team of experts today.
