With more of us spending more time at home than ever before, its a great idea to make sure that your home is set up the best it can be for the multiple situations you are going to use it for. Whether it is entertaining, working from home, having a movie night, cooking up a feast, or creating a family.

Most of the time, when a house is designed, little thought is actually put into living in the space. If your house is a bit older, there is a good chance modern living circumstances are completely different from when the house was originally built.  Step away from being okay with just okay, and let The Electric Collective help you take your house to the next level. You do, after all, own the house and you do spend a lot of time there, so why not make that time the best it can be. As industry-leading electricians, The Electric Collective's residential and commercial team has the skills and equipment to upgrade your home.

Here is a list of great ideas to take your home to the next level:

Mood Lighting

The quickest and easiest way to help improve the mood and atmosphere to suit the use of the space is to introduce mood lighting. To utilize this to its best potential, think of lighting as a tool to create different feelings in a space. Light can also be used to create rooms inside rooms, such as dividing a dining room and living room. With more and more homes becoming open plan, this is becoming more and more essential.

• Sunset Dimming; this is a great effect that can create a warm relaxing room. This function allows the downlights to be warm white colour when at full brightness, but to output a fantastic amber glow when dimmed. Think homely wood fire or the orange hue of a sunset. This function allows the space to serve many functions without adding more light points.
• Extra Low Glare Downlights; narrow beam downlights that tilt allow specific items to be lit, creating highlights on areas or items such as artwork, architectural pieces, areas of rooms, or furniture. This can be a great way to break up a room, rather than having the entire room lit at one level.
• LED Lighting; this modern solution allows you to have fantastic light levels throughout a room, whilst having running costs at a minimum. Available in many styles, shapes, brightness', and colours, there is an LED solution for every situation.

Ventilation and Heating

With us spending more time at home than ever, it is more important than ever to make sure the air we are breathing is healthy and that the rooms we live in are comfortable. Removing the moisture from the air makes a house cheaper to heat and cool, creates a healthy environment for you to live in, and will make appliances and furniture last longer. Something often overlooked, ventilation and heating is an important aspect of a healthy home.

• Heat Pumps; these highly efficient devices can heat and cool, allowing you to use your heat pump all year round. They also have some filtering properties so can clean the air of particulates as they run. Installing a ducted, low wall, or high wall heat pump system will be a massive step towards having your home comfortable throughout the year. It is you living there, so why not make it more enjoyable and healthier.
• Ventilation and Energy Recovery; a healthy home is a dry home, moisture creates mould and other health issues. Fitting your house with ventilation and an energy recovery system will keep the air fresh and dry, this will reduce the condensation on your windows, reduce your heating bill, and make the air easier to breathe. An energy recovery system will vent air out of the house and pump fresh air in, it will simultaneously capture any energy from the air it is venting out, energy from the air you have cooled or heated, and transfer the energy to the fresh air it is pumping in, this ensures that the money you have spent getting the air temperature to your comfort does not simply go to waste.  

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Get power outlets to work for you

Avoid struggling with adaptors, multi-plugs, and multi-boards. Talk to us about putting in the appropriate outlets to service your needs. With more of us working from home, the power requirements that were once needed in a home have been well exceeded. Don't fall into the trap of stacking multi-boxes onto extension leads onto more multi-boxes, this is recipe for disaster.

• Double Power Outlets with USB; no more looking for an adaptor to plug your phone cord into, power outlets can now come with USB outlets to charge your devices. The range of this capacity is ever-increasing, from speeds of 1.2a upwards, some outlets can now supply 60w laptop charging.
• Quad Power Outlets; to save putting more holes in the wall, you can easily swap a power outlet out for a quad, essentially a wall-mounted multi-box, the components in the quad outlet are actually designed to handle 10amps each unlike a plug-in unit which is restricted to 10amps total across all of the outlets
• Surge Protectors and RCD protection; Modern protection is available for us to install, to protect you and your appliances from electrical danger. Surge protectors will protect your appliances from unforeseen spikes in electrical voltage above 275v, possibly created by a fault on the supply grid or a nearby lightning strike. RCD protection will protect you in case of an electrical fault, with extremely accurate tripping sensitivity and extremely quick tripping times, an RCD will look after you if you are at risk of a fatal electric shock.
  

Home Automation to make life easier;

Smart Home is perhaps the wrong terminology to use at times. The aim of a smart home should really be to achieve an 'Easy Home', using the smarts to make your life easier and more convenient. In today's world, every minute counts, the years are going quicker, the days are going faster. Your home needs to fit to your lifestyle. This could mean something as simple as opening the blinds in the morning on a schedule, to save you those few precious minutes in the morning. It could also mean something more complex such as ensuring your coffee is hot, the lights are on and the TV is on the news channel, for your morning wake up. If you are after more information on smart homes or home automation, feel free to get in touch or check out our blog 'smart homes for beginners'.

Hopefully, this has given you some ideas about how you can enhance your home, every minute you wait is another minute you could have been living in a next-level home so act now. Feel free to reach out to the team at The Electric Collective and we will be more than happy to help you and offer advice.

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