For years the company has been known as one of the world’s best in matters regarding home furniture. However, in 2012, the company started its smart home initiative to incorporate digital elements and technology into its products to offer solutions to homeowners.
The company has introduced several smart products under its Tradfri Homekit, which have turned heads in the smart home market due to the relatively low price and versatility.
These smart products include Wi-Fi speakers, Electric blinds, wireless charging and accessories, and smart lighting.
IKEA lighting
IKEA smart hub enables you to light your home the way you prefer or feel it. With IKEA lighting, you can integrate your bulbs or panels with your Smartphone. This gives you the freedom to dim, change colors, turn them on or off or even change their glow from cold to warm.
IKEA blinds
The Tradfri IFTTT (if this, then that) blinds make it possible to control your blinds from the comfort of your bed. Whether you need some sunlight to get inside your bedroom or you want to close them completely, you can do all this without the need to wake up.
Smart Appliances
IKEA IFTTT is not limited to your blinds and smart lighting alone; you can also control other devices in your home to fit your preference.
IKEA’s home automation system also includes table lamps fitted with a Wi-Fi speaker and also a Wi-Fi bookshelf speaker. By just tapping on your mobile phone, you can control the music quality playing in your home.
Ways you can control your IKEA home kit
- Remote control – IKEA home automation appliances come with remote control. This ensures that you can control the products by touching simple buttons on the remote.
- Sensor – The IKEA smart lighting is equipped with sensors that can detect your motion around the house. If you leave a certain room, they’ll switch themselves off, and when you enter another room, they can detect your motion in there and turn on the lights.
- IKEA home smart app – The best part about IKEA home automation systems is that you can control them using an app. The formally used Tradfri app has become the new IKEA home smart app to control their smart products. With this mobile app, you can set timers, regulate your speakers’ volume and also control other smart home appliances. All that is required here is to install the app and integrate it into your home automation system, and you’ll be good to go.
- Voice control – With the introduction of IKEA Alexa and IKEA Google home, you can use digital voice assistants to control your smart home devices. You’ll be able to give commands to digital voice assistants like Apple Homekit, Alexa, and Google Assistant and have them regulate everything accordingly.
What makes IKEA Home Automation System Unique from the Rest?
Many players in the smart home industry have brought their products into the market for different consumers to try but not all of them have succeeded.
Even though IKEA’s introduction to the home automation system came as a surprise for most people, there are some things that the furniture giant has gotten right, unlike its competitors. They include;
Stick to The Basics
The Tradfri IFTTT lights have revolutionized the functionality and flash of smart lights. Even though you can’t control these lights from just anywhere in the world, you’re still left with features that enhance comfort and convenience in your home.
With other smart home lights either been too expensive or too hard to install, IKEA homekit has completely changed that. These smart lights come with the lowest price tag in the market while also being easy to install and use in your home.
All that is required after you have purchased the Tradfri homekit is to screw them in place, ensure that your remote control has batteries, and that’s it.
In case the remote control isn’t convenient enough for you, you can always get an IKEA smart hub and download the IKEA smart home app to control the smart lights from your phone.
With IKEA’s experience in designing lighting fixtures to suit different preferences among their customers, they have made their smart home lights with an appealing design that will captivate their customers and potential ones.
Freedom of choice
Another aspect that has made IKEA’s smart home automation stand out from the rest is that Tradfri can use Zigbee Light Link to communicate with other smart devices.
This means that it can also be effortlessly used with other smart devices that use different software, even competing smart lights. For example, after you’ve updated your IKEA home kit software, you’ll be able to control your Tradfri homekit from the Philips Hue app.
This is something new that most smart home automation systems don’t have. This has given the customers a renewed freedom to choose the smart bulbs they would prefer for their IKEA lamps.
Also, IKEA has extended this freedom of choice for their customers by incorporating multiple digital voice assistants into their smart home automation systems.
With IKEA smart home automation system, it won’t matter if you use Amazon Echo or Google Home or even both; you’ll still be able to shout commands to your smart devices and have them respond accordingly.
This is particularly important since most people nowadays do not even prefer tapping on their mobile phones to control their smart home devices; they want a house that listens to them!
Big Footprint
Before we all heard IKEA’s plans to step into the world of smart home automation systems, we’ve known them as the biggest furniture house in the world. With the company serving over 900 million people from its 400 stores, you can expect that it is well known and liked.
This means that the company already had millions of potential customers when they rolled out their smart home automation system to the public.
All is IKEA needs to sell their smart products even better than their competitors is to educate their customers about the uses and benefits of their devices. Since they already have a preexisting relationship, they are bound to win these customers.
Final Thoughts
With their good track record in delivering the best quality products to their customers, you can expect IKEA to rip big with their smart home automation systems.
However, with a company such as IKEA that is ever devoted to ensuring maximum customer satisfaction, it’s guaranteed that the smart home market will be winning big too.
If you are still feeling a little muddled up and looking for some help, then check out my Smart Home in 8 Weeks course designed to take you from zero to a fully integrated smart home!