Technology can be a wonderful thing, especially when it helps you live your day-to-day life. Installing a platform lift can help you to move freely between the different levels of your house. Especially if you, or someone you know, are less mobile because of illness, disability, age, or you’re/they’re in a wheelchair.

Home automation systems are there to make your day-to-day life easier by putting some smarts around things in your home i.e. voice activated lighting, alarm clocks which switch on coffee machines, security systems etc.

So, when you combine the two together, you’re looking at much smoother, easier, living conditions. We look at some of the things you could do when you integrate your platform lift into your smart home.

Control it with your voice.

Call it up/or down with your voice. Imagine lying in bed, or sitting in the living room and you’re ready to move up or down the stairs. Rather than getting the lift, switching it on, and pressing a button, you could simply say "Turn lift on", take yourself over to the platform then say "take me up or down".

Set your lights to come on when you arrive.

Why worry about whether you’ve remembered to switch the lights off? You could program your system to know when you’re up or downstairs. Then every time you go upstairs in the lift, the upstairs lights come on and vice versa. Plus, if you’ve got movement sensitive lighting, you’ll never have to worry about using a light switch again.

Make it part of your morning routine.

Your alarm clock goes off and music starts playing, you get up and take a shower, the lift is programmed to turn on once the shower turns off. So, all you have to do is get to it and tell it to take you downstairs.

Calls for maintenance.

You can set it to send its own maintenance information, so it can book a service call when it needs to be done. Or remind you at the right time so you can feel confident that it will keep working for you, as and when you need it.

Boil the kettle before you reach the kitchen.

Program the lift to switch the kettle / coffee machine on as soon as you get on it in the morning. That way, you just have to turn up and make your favourite morning beverage. No watching the kettle whilst it boils for you.

Turn the heating / air conditioning on.

Just like the lights, you could program the air conditioning and/or heating to come on at the level you’re currently in. Then you never have to worry about leaving it on overnight, or remembering you’ve left it on and having to come all the way back downstairs to turn it off.