Your Smart Home Shouldn’t Look Like a Best Buy
We need to talk about the blinking lights.
I walked into a friend’s house last week—let’s call him Dave—and I immediately felt like I was standing inside a server rack. He was so proud. He had a mesh router sitting on the mantle like a trophy, a voice assistant puck on every end table, and a wall-mounted tablet that looked like it was glued there by a drunk contractor. The living room glowed with the cold, blue light of a dozen standby LEDs.
It was awful.
Look, I love tech. I have more sensors in my ceiling than I care to admit. But somewhere around 2024, we collectively decided that “smart home” shouldn’t mean “living inside a spaceship.” If you’re still displaying your router like a piece of art in 2026, we need to have an intervention. The best technology isn’t the stuff you show off; it’s the stuff you don’t even know is there until you need it.
We’re in the era of ambient computing now. Or at least, we should be. The goal is to strip away the plastic casings and glass screens and integrate intelligence directly into the materials of our homes. Wood, stone, fabric. Not plastic, glass, and aluminum.
Here is how I’ve been hiding the tech in my own place, and why you should probably stop treating your gadgets like decoration.
The “Black Mirror” Problem
The TV is the elephant in the room. Always has been. For decades, interior designers fought a losing battle against the giant black rectangle. We tried hiding them in armoires (clunky), putting them on motorized lifts (loud and expensive), or just accepting defeat.
But the tech caught up. I finally ditched my standard OLED for a dedicated “art mode” display last year. Yes, the matte finish slightly dulls the contrast if you’re a pixel-peeping cinephile watching HDR content in a pitch-black room. I don’t care. The trade-off is worth it. When the TV is off, it looks like a matte print of a Rothko. It has texture. It doesn’t reflect the room like a mirror.
If you really want to disappear the screen, short-throw projectors have gotten frighteningly good since CES 2025. You can now get 8K crispness from a box that sits flush inside a custom credenza, projecting onto a wall that looks like normal drywall. No screen, no black box, just an image that appears when you want it.
I’ve seen some high-end installs recently using those transparent MicroLED panels Samsung showed off a while back. They look like clear glass until you turn them on. Expensive? Absurdly. But give it two years, and that tech will trickle down to the rest of us. For now, if you can’t afford transparent glass, just buy a TV that knows how to pretend it’s a painting. Your living room will thank you.
Sound Should Be Heard, Not Seen
I have a controversial take: floor-standing speakers are ugly. I know, audiophiles are going to come for me. “But the soundstage! The separation!”
Fine. Keep your towers in the dedicated listening room. But in the kitchen? The living room? The bedroom? You don’t need giant boxes taking up floor space.
I recently retrofitted my dining room with invisible speakers. Not “in-wall” speakers with those ugly white grilles that eventually turn yellow. I mean truly invisible. These are transducers that sit behind the drywall. You mud over them, tape them, paint them, and wallpaper right over the top.
The first time I turned them on, my brain broke a little. The sound comes from the wall itself. It’s not directional in the same way a tweeter is; it’s diffuse. It fills the space. Is it perfect for critical listening of vinyl records? No. Is it incredible for a dinner party playlist or morning news? Absolutely. And the best part is looking at the ceiling and seeing… nothing. Just clean plaster.
If ripping open your walls isn’t an option, look at the furniture integration stuff IKEA and Sonos started years ago and others have perfected. Lamps that are speakers. Shelves that are speakers. Frame art that vibrates to produce sound. Stop buying black plastic boxes and putting them on shelves.
The Sensor Revolution (mmWave is Magic)
For the longest time, motion sensors were these gross white bubbles you stuck in the corner of the room. They looked like oversized pimples. And they were stupid—if you sat still on the couch for too long, the lights would turn off, leaving you waving your arms like a lunatic in the dark.
That’s over. Thank god.
I switched everything to mmWave (millimeter wave) presence sensors about six months ago. Unlike the old PIR (passive infrared) sensors that just looked for heat movement, mmWave is radar. It can detect the rise and fall of your chest as you breathe. It knows you’re there even if you’re reading a book and not moving a muscle.
Because they use radar, they can hide behind things. I have one mounted behind a canvas painting in the hallway. It works perfectly through the canvas and the wood frame. I have another one tucked inside a bookshelf, behind a row of paperbacks. The signal punches right through.
The result? My lights react to me, but I never see the sensor. The house just feels intuitive. It’s not “smart” in the sense that I have to command it; it’s responsive.
Surface Computing: Wood is the New Touchscreen
Why does my fridge need a tablet on it? Seriously. I don’t need to watch TikToks while I’m getting ice. It’s a trend that needs to die.
The cooler approach is “shy tech” or capacitive surfaces. I saw a demo recently from a company—mui Lab has been doing this for a while—where a literal block of wood had a touch interface embedded under the veneer. When it was off, it was just a piece of timber on the wall. When you touched it, LEDs glowed through the wood grain to show thermostat controls or weather.
I hacked together something similar for my nightstand. I routed out the underside of the top surface and stuck a wireless charger and a capacitive sensor there. Now, I just tap the wood to turn off the overhead lights, and I drop my phone on the bare wood to charge it. No wires, no plastic pads, no glowing LEDs keeping me awake.
We are seeing this in kitchen countertops now, too. Induction burners installed under a continuous slab of porcelain or specialized stone. You can chop veggies on the counter, then slide the pot over and cook right on the surface. When you’re done, you wipe it down. It’s just a counter again. That is the dream. Technology that gets out of the way.
The Closet of Shame (Where the Ugly Stuff Lives)
Of course, you can’t actually get rid of the hardware. The processing power has to live somewhere. If you want an invisible smart home, you need a dedicated “brain” closet.
I converted a coat closet near my entryway. It’s where the ugly stuff lives. The network switch, the NVR for the cameras, the smart home hub (Home Assistant Green, in my case), the NAS drive. All of it is rack-mounted or Velcroed to a structured wiring panel.
This was the single biggest upgrade I made. I ran Ethernet drops from this closet to key points in the house (ceiling access points, TV locations, office). By hardwiring the stationary stuff, I got the Wi-Fi traffic off the airwaves, making the wireless experience better for my phone and laptop.
But more importantly, it cleared the clutter. There are no blinking blue lights in my bedroom anymore. There is no router humming on my desk. It’s all contained, cooled, and hidden behind a solid door.
It’s About Respect
Integrating technology this way isn’t just about aesthetics; it’s about respecting your own attention. When you fill your home with screens and LEDs, you are constantly being signaled. “Look at me! I have a notification! I’m connected!”
A home should be a sanctuary, not a command center. The tech should work for you, not the other way around. If I have to explain to a guest how to turn on the lights, I failed. If I have to look at a router to get Wi-Fi, I failed.
So, do yourself a favor. Take a look around your living room right now. If you see a wire, a black plastic box, or a blinking light, ask yourself: Does this need to be seen? Or can I bury it behind a wall, a book, or a piece of wood?
Bury it. You’ll feel better.
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