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Smart blinds are a versatile upgrade for your windows that can increase your privacy, enhance your sleep, and even help you save on your energy bill.

Compared to plain old window treatments, smart blinds are expensive. But if you're debating whether it's worth the upgrade, here are eight compelling reasons to consider it.

What Are Smart Blinds?

Maybe you haven't paid much attention to the smart blind market (and hey, there's a lot to keep up with these days, so we won't hold that against you). Before we look at the benefits of smart blinds, let's talk briefly about them.

The term smart blinds is used to refer to not only actual blinds but various automated window treatments too. The smart blinds market is actually an extension of the automated window treatment market. Long before there was "smart" everything, high-end homes with premium window treatments often had automated motorized systems where the push of a button would open and close all the blinds or drapes in a room.

Those systems still exist, but advances in technology (and the miniaturization thereof) has democratized the market a bit and made automated window treatments, complete with smart home integration and other features, more accessible. Smart blinds still aren't as cheap as their "dumb" counterparts, but they're more affordable and accessible than ever before. What used to require custom home wiring now can run off batteries.

8 Reasons to Consider Smart Blinds for Your Home

If you're weighing whether or not it's worth the expense to upgrade to smart blinds or other smart window treatments, it's helpful to consider all the benefits beyond just the wow factor of feeling like you're living in the future.

Here are some compelling reasons to outfit your home, or perhaps just your bedroom, with smart window treatments.

Automation Is Magic

It's hard to order a list of smart blind benefits because everyone will find slightly different value in the various benefits of automating their window treatments. That's exactly why we put automation at the top of the list.

Hands down, the biggest benefit of smart blinds, like many other smart home categories, is automation. The rest of our benefits list is essentially just an extension of automation as the primary benefit. Remote control, scheduling, smart home integration, and more are all possible when your window treatments are automated. That makes it easy to use them most effectively.

Ease of Use

If throwing open the drapes like a Victorian governess airing out your home is something you enjoy doing, by all means, continue. But it's easy to leave the window treatments in whatever state they're in because you're busy or don't feel like fussing with them.

And for folks with limited mobility, especially older people, all too often, blinds and drapes stay closed because it's arduous or even impossible to operate them. The ability to open the blinds at the push of a button (or have them automatically open and close on a schedule) might be the difference between an elderly relative sitting in a dim room or enjoying a sunny day.

Enhanced Privacy

There's a point every evening where your windows stop being mirrors that bounce the bright daylight back out to the street and instead become a peephole into your home for people passing by.

You could avoid that problem by leaving the blinds closed all day or going through your home and closing them every evening, or you could let the magic of automation close them at dusk (or whenever you want enhanced privacy).

Improved Sleep Quality

Some people have the magic ability to drop into deep sleep regardless of the conditions around them, but if you're not the sort that can sleep soundly in a room bathed in the glow of a streetlight, you're hardly alone.

Blackout shades and drapes are hardly a new invention, but they have the downside of blacking out the room until you awake to open them. You can solve the lack of light to rouse you with smart bulbs (a trick that is especially useful in the depths of winter), but it's tough to beat bright morning light streaming through your window to help you wake up naturally. With smart blinds, you'll never forget to close the blinds again at night or wake up in the dark again.

Smart Home Integration

Your window treatments are often the last piece of the total automation puzzle. If you've already set up your smart home to respond to "Alexa, it's movie time" by switching up the lighting scheme, turning on the TV, and otherwise preparing the mood and tools for enjoying a movie... why not extend the experience to your smart home automatically blacking out the windows too?

And even if you're not interested in flashy and fun uses like that, you can integrate your blinds with things like proximity sensors, temperature sensors, and such so that your home can automatically open and close the blinds in response to parameters you've set like the last person leaving for the day or a south-facing room getting too hot.

Reduced Energy Costs

While it varies by climate and the time of year, covering your windows with blinds or drawn drapes can significantly impact your energy consumption. Keeping the sun out in the summer makes it cheaper to cool your home, and letting the sun in during the winter is free heat. Carefully managing your window treatments can shave 10-15% off your energy bill.

But carefully managing your window treatments is a hassle, and how many of us religiously open and close our blinds or drapes at the right time of day, every day, to take advantage of the savings? With smart blinds, however, you can schedule things to maximize your savings based on the season.

Cord Free-Designs Are Safer

It's not the flashiest feature, but it's certainly worth noting. The majority of smart blinds on the market have no control cords or such for children and pets to get tangled up in. The mechanism is completely housed inside the header of the blinds. The only external part is the blind itself.

Your cat might still paw at your blinds to get a peek outside or your kid might play around with them, but there's no risk of anybody's head getting tangled up in cords.

Better Home Security

It's tough to peer in windows and case a place if the windows are all covered. Closing the blinds doesn't make a place invulnerable to burglary, but it certainly makes it less appealing.

Smart blinds make it easy to automate closing all the blinds with a single tap, by schedule, or even by proximity. So whether you close them all when you head to work by using your phone, program your work schedule into the blinds, or do some more advanced smart home tinkering to have your blinds close automatically when your smartphone passes a geofence border around your home, you'll never be left with your windows wide open when you're away at the office.