Wi-Fi Wonderland: A Guide to Smart Home Holiday Decorations

It’s the most wonderful time of the year—when you get the opportunity to outfit your home in all manner of illuminated goodness.

Whether you’re a fan of bold decorations or understated elegance, classic or contemporary styles, smart home technology can help you achieve the look—and manage it—with ease.

Below, a few options for high-tech holiday cheer.

Twinkly

Perhaps the name in connected Christmas lighting, Twinkly offers multi-color LED lighting options in a variety of forms—strings, icicles, curtains, clusters—all with clever and convenient smart technology. In addition to providing a palette of over 16 million colours, Twinkly makes it simple for users to get the exact look they want. In addition to offering voice control via Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, Twinkly’s user-friendly app allows owners to program the colours they want down to the exact bulb—even letting them draw and customize the light scheme they desire by tracing with their finger. And if you’re not feeling particularly creative, no worries. Twinkly has a suite of pre-programmed lighting effects and animations that can be simply selected via the app or voice command. And, of course, as you would want from any holiday light, Twinkly lights are IP44-rated weatherproof, making them ideal for indoor or outdoor use.

Twinkly multicolour LEDs range from approx. $70 to $263, depending on size and configuration.

To outfit your home in the sparkle of the season to its best advantage, follow these tips from the design pros https://t.co/5cD8s0yrwd

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AtmosKIT Plus (M1)

Multicolour LEDs aren’t your only opportunity to play with light and magic this holiday season. The AtmosKIT Plus is a ViewSonic M1 short-throw projector that can quickly and easily drape your home in cinematic digital decorations. The endlessly portable projector, which weighs under two pounds and features a built-in, 360-degree smart stand, is capable of projecting on to surfaces 40 to over 100 inches away—and comes with 12 holiday decoration projections, with hundreds more available for download from AtmosFX.com. Or you can find and create your own. The AtmosKIT is able to wirelessly mirror and project anything you can play on an iOS or Android device, meaning you can loop snowflakes falling on your window, or play the entirety of “It’s a Wonderful Life” on your wall.

The AtmosKIT Plus (M1) is available for approx. $448.

Meross Smart WiFi Indoor/Outdoor Plug

The holiday season is all about traditions and perhaps you have some decorations which you use every year; maybe they’ve even been passed across generations. Well, never fear—you, too, can take advantage of smart technology. The Meross Smart WiFi is a dual port, indoor/outdoor plug that works with Apple Homekit, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, and can easily handle any of the weather conditions that mark the holiday season in colder climates. In addition to offering users voice control, app control and the ability to schedule when to power on and power off devices, the Meross lets you control each outlet independently—meaning you can power your decorations together, or decide to alternate between various holiday cheer scenes.

The Meross Smart WiFi Indoor/Outdoor Plug is available for around $40.

Climate change is already affecting home values due to the impact of more severe weather events and rising home insurance premiums, and the cost of building is likely to rise as regulatory changes designed to enhance climate resilience alter building codes and zoning laws, according to a new report.

The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council describes climate change as an emerging trend that is raising the cost and complexity of supplying more housing. In its newly released State of the Housing System report, the council discusses how climate change is reducing the value of some homes when major weather events cause flooding or other natural disasters.

“The price differential between flood-affected and non-flood affected homes has been estimated to be up to 35 percent a year after a flooding event,” the report says. “Furthermore, the RBA estimates around 7.5 percent of properties are in areas that could experience price falls of at least 5 percent due to climate change by 2050.”

More than one million households are struggling to afford home insurance, and rates of non-insurance are increasing due to the cost. For example, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission estimated that 40 percent of homes in Northern Western Australia were uninsured in 2020.

“Climate change is causing home insurance premiums to rise across Australia, adding to already elevated housing costs. Homeowners in areas considered at–risk of natural disasters are expected to see insurance premiums rise further or have difficulty obtaining insurance due to heightened risks.”

More frequent and severe weather events such as cyclones and bushfires, as well as coastal erosion and flooding from rising sea levels, present risks to housing safety. More than 3,000 homes were lost in the 2019-20 bushfire season, causing $2.3 billion in insurance losses. The report says the predicted direct cost of natural disasters to the economy and housing will be $35.2 billion per year by 2050.

Climate change and net-zero targets could raise the cost of building new homes, the report says. “Regulatory changes to enhance climate resilience will alter building codes and zoning regulations.

Developers facing higher compliance costs may have difficulties meeting updated standards, potentially delaying or reducing housing availability.”

However, the report says the increased cost of building a home with climate-resistant materials and eco-friendly features is more than offset by lower energy costs over a property’s lifetime. The current minimum energy efficiency requirements within the National Construction Code are estimated to deliver a household–level benefit-to-cost ratio of 1.37, according to the report.

Wi-Fi Wonderland: A Guide to Smart Home Holiday Decorations

Surround yourself with colourful, connected cheer

The insurance premium gap between flood affected and non-flood affected homes is significant