TechRadar Smart Home Week
This article is part of TechRadar’s Smart Home Week 2025. From lighting and switches to robot vacuums and smart thermostats, we’re here to help you pick the right devices to make your life easier, and get the most out of them.
If you’re redecorating a room, you might be wondering whether it’s worth investing in a set of smart blinds rather than a regular window covering, so you can control them with an app, voice commands, or as part of a larger smart home ecosystem. Imagine having blinds that open automatically when it’s time to get up, for example, or ones that go down when you turn on your home entertainment system.
I recently reviewed the SmartWings Motorized Smart Shades and loved them. I have traditional blinds around the rest of my home, and have used many different kinds of traditional blinds over the years. If you’re considering upgrading to smart blinds in your home, read on for a detailed comparison.
Benefits of smart blinds
The primary benefit of smart blinds is that you have so much more control over their opening and closing than you do with traditional blinds. You can set up a schedule on your smartphone so they open and close at certain times. For example, I have mine set up to open at sunrise and close at sunset. You could also set them to open and close at specific times. Perhaps set them to open a few minutes before your morning alarm for a gentle wakeup and have them close at the time you usually wind down for bed. You could also have them open and close in association with other events, such as having them close when you leave the house and open when you come home.
Outside of scheduling your blinds to open and close, you can just control them with a tap on your smartphone. You can also control them with a voice command to your digital assistant of choice. I set mine up with my iPhone, and my HomePod mini is my home hub. In addition to the sunrise/sunset schedule I’ve set up, I can also control them with a tap in Control Center or by telling Siri to open or close them.
You don’t even need to be home to open and close your smart blinds. As long as you have your smart blinds connected to your home hub, you can control them from the other side of the planet if you like.
Smart blinds generally come with a remote control too, so anyone can easily control them with a touch of a button. You’re not limited to smartphone usage. This is handy if some members of your household aren’t connected to the home hub, or if you have visitors that wish to control the blinds themselves.
Because you’re not handling smart blinds manually, they might even be less likely to break over the years. This is just speculation, because I haven’t had smart blinds for years yet. But the manual ones in my home that I open and close most frequently by hand have developed issues. The cheaper blinds I have had with hanging strings invariably got tangled and bent. I replaced the cheap blinds with some pricier blinds where all the strings are on the inside, giving a more streamlined look. I do open and close these blinds daily, and somehow the interior strings have gotten messed up, rendering the blinds permanently askew. These manual blinds still function fine, but they don’t look so nice anymore.
Drawbacks of smart blinds
Although there is a wide variety of smart blinds available, there is still a far larger selection of traditional blinds on the market in terms of style and color. If you have a specific look you’re going for, you may have a hard time finding smart blinds that fit in perfectly with your decor. This is particularly true if you have extra large or unusually-shaped windows.
Installing smart blinds isn’t really different from installing traditional ones, except of course that you do need to do the extra step of setting them up with your home hub and/or smartphone once they’re in place. That can be a little tricky, but once it’s done, it’s done.
Keep in mind that unlike many traditional blinds, smart blinds do require a power source. This may mean dealing with unsightly power cords or periodically having to charge your smart blinds’ battery. My smart blinds have a rechargeable battery that can be charged via a wall charger or a solar charger that sticks to the window near the USB-C charging port.
When comparing blinds that are similar in size, function, and materials, it’s likely that smart blinds will be generally more expensive than traditional blinds. However, the difference in price may not be as much as you think, particularly when you’re talking about custom or designer blinds.
Conclusion
I love my smart blinds and plan to install more of them in my home as old ones need replacing. There are drawbacks, of course. Smart blinds do require a power source. They need to be set up initially with a smartphone, as well as a home hub if you want to be able to control them from outside the home. Generally, you will find less selection of smart blinds in terms of color, size, and style. And smart blinds do tend to be pricier. But all of this is outweighed by their ability to be controlled in such a sophisticated way. They can be scheduled for specific times or situations, you can just “set it and forget it.” You can control them with a tap on your smartphone or a couple of words to your digital assistant of choice. You don’t have to be at home, or even on the continent to control them. And yet you can still control them the “old-fashioned way,” via remote control. For anyone who wants that ability to control their blinds in so many ways, smart blinds are a completely worthwhile purchase.
