Smart homes

By learning to fit it into family life. Field studies find that smart home technology unsettles routines before it settles in, and that one person often sets it up and runs it for everyone. Voice control is opening the home to people with disabilities and older adults, and making energy visible helps: active users of home energy displays cut electricity use by about 7 per cent on average.

What the report found

1. Connected things are now ordinary in many homes. In 2024, about seven in ten people in the European Union used an internet connected device. Devices that manage energy, appliances or security at home were each used by 12 to 14 per cent.
2. Older research explains much of the take up. People adopt technology that is useful, easy and fits how they live, and rely on it best when their trust matches what it can do. They respond to talking machines socially, and use less energy when they can see it.
3. Living with a smart home takes learning, and one person often does it. In a nine month trial in ten households, the technology unsettled routines before it settled in. In shared homes, the person who sets the system up tends to run it for everyone.
4. Connected homes open everyday life to more people. People with a range of disabilities use voice assistants at home, sometimes in ways nobody planned, and older adults who rarely use computers used them to find information.
5. Energy savings depend on design and engagement, not on the device alone. Across a dozen pilots, active users of home energy displays cut electricity use by about 7 per cent on average, but displays can fade into the background. Clear feedback and guidance matter most.

What is inside

1. What is new
2. What older research tells us
3. What early studies suggest
4. What nobody knows yet
5. Questions worth watching

Plus an evidence maturity map, the steps of home automation, seven principles for smart home control, a scenario grid, a list of signals to watch and five tests for a connected home that serves the people who live in it.

Who it is for

For designers of connected products, energy and housing teams, people who care for older or disabled relatives, and anyone thinking about making their own home smarter.

How we work

Frontier Reports separate what is established from what is emerging and what remains untested. Every claim is graded, and where researchers disagree, as they do on whether smart homes help people use less energy, both sides are set out before we say where we stand.

Cite this report

The Why We Project (2026) Smart homes: Living with connected things. Frontier Report No. 22. Dubai: Why We Tech Ltd. Available at: thewhyweproject.com