And How a Professional Can Help Bring Smart Technology to Your Home

Have you been thinking about adding smart home automation to your Richmond home? With the plethora of solutions available to Virginia homeowners, wrapping your head around all the available options may be challenging.

It may be tempting to approach smart home technology yourself, and there's no shortage of DIY smart home products. However, as a professional home technology integrator, Sound + Image strongly feels that you will get the best results if you hire a company like us. While you can dabble successfully with some smart home products yourself, you will benefit from your investment with a professionally designed and installed whole-house automation solution.  A complete home automation installation will yield more benefits than the sum of the parts! Read more below to learn what you need to know.

Make it Easy for Clients to Add Immersive Sound Systems

One of the most important leaps in home theater and media room technology over the past six years has been in sound. You might be thinking, what about screens and projectors? Of course, the quality of visuals has gone up markedly, with 4K resolution, HDR, OLED flat panels, and other technologies becoming more common and lower in cost.

But the sound is an equally important part of the viewing experience. In 2015, Dolby introduced Atmos, an immersive surround format that took movies and shows to the next level with enveloping, three-dimensional sound. Since then, Dolby Atmos – and similar competing formats like DTS:X – have been integrated into all types of surround sound systems. And even better, it's becoming available on a huge array of streaming content and music too. But to make the most of it, if you are working with clients on a media room or home theater design for their Henrico, VA home, three things can help ensure that they're set up for the best experience. Keep reading for three important elements to consider for integrating surround sound systems in your projects.  

Who Says AV Systems Can’t Blend with Décor? 

Do you struggle with integrating audio and video equipment into your rooms? You want the entertainment, but you don’t want the equipment to be the focus. A long time ago, TVs and audio centers were encased in furniture to help them blend into a room. Those days are long gone, as most equipment – with a few exceptions – is black or silver plastic and metal. 

However, today's electronics components do have an advantage. They're much more compact and easier to hide or disguise. You might be asking, what about giant flat-screen TVs? When turned off, they are large slabs of black on the wall. But because they're so thin – unlike the huge TVs of yesteryear – there are ways to make those blend in too. Keep reading for three ways to make your new entertainment center installation blend easily with your style and décor in your Goochland County, VA home. 

An automation firm has the skills and tools you need to take your home builds to the next level with smart technology 

According to market research, approximately 258 million smart homes exist worldwide, and the smart home market share is roughly 99 billion USD. We can only expect these numbers to rise in the coming years as homeowners demand more sophisticated, convenient, and intuitive smart technology solutions to manage their homes. 

As part of the design-build profession, you undoubtedly already know that including smart solutions in new builds is an effective way to attract more high-end buyers and set your firm apart from the competition. When you partner with a home automation installer like Sound + Image, we make it easy to satisfy client expectations for home automation. Keep reading to learn the key services we bring to new builds in Chesterfield County, VA.

Streaming music is great, but what else can you listen to with whole home audio?

March 2025: This blog has been updated with more current information. 

Installing a whole home audio system is a great way to cater to the unique entertainment needs of everyone in your home. A whole home audio setup uses centralized source components and cabling to deliver music and other audio sources to individual speakers in every room of your house. 

With multi-room audio distribution from Control4, you can use your smartphone or touchscreen tablet to play music in a single room or every room with the press of a button. Most likely, everyone in your family has different music tastes, and a whole home audio solution can accommodate them all! 

Keep reading to learn more about the various audio sources you can enjoy with your whole house sound system in Henrico, VA, and surrounding areas.