INTERIORS BRAND? Tips from the experts TH E TECH LIST T he latest innovations a nd cutting-edge ideas for the year ahead

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The ‘ It ’ products, zeitgeist i n novations a nd st yle-sav v y ideas for 2021

A N T I - B A C C H A R G I N G While we ’re all n ow expert hand washers, how of ten have you t h o u g h t a b o u t t h e bac teria build- up on your smartphone? This wireless charging bucket takes the faf f out of cleaning your phone thanks to the inclusion of a built-in LED lamp that emits anti-bacterial UV-C l i g h t w i t h i o n i z e r technology that sanitises yo u r p h o n e a s yo u r battery tops up. It works with any Qi- cer tified smartphone up to 3.3” w i d e . L e x o n O B L I O s m a r t p h o n e c h a r g e r and UV sanitiser, £80, selfridges.com A L E X A , C L E A N M Y H O U S E ! The most st ylish robot vacuum on the market, and also th e b est- by-fa r at navigating around your home and picking up a huge amount of dust and p e t h a i r. T h e m o t o r automatically adjusts across hard floors and carpets, it can be controlled using A l e x a , S i r i o r G o o g l e Assistant voice control, the air filtration system cleans the atmosphere as it goes and, best of all, when the 0.4litre bin is full, it docks, recharges and empties its contents into a vacuum bag that has enough room for 30 full vacuum bins of dirt. iRobot Roomba S9+, £1,500, irobot.co.uk

F L E X I B L E L I G H T I N G The Alis, from Italian start-up Potemine, is a refreshingly new take on traditional lighting fixtures that combines the portability of a battery-powered torch with stylish interiorfriendly looks of a wall, floor or table lamp. In fact, it can be all three; can easily be moved a ro u n d th e h o u s e , charges simply on a wireless base and uses intuitive touch control to adjust brightness – plus you can control it w i t h A l e x a v o i c e assistant. Alis, £450, potemine.com

T R A N S P A R E N T T V A pod system for skincare that dispenses the freshest possible face cream or skin wash at the touch of a button. Each product is mixed with your choice of active ingredients to produce the ideal product for the way your skin is feeling each day. Each custom-blended formulation is then squirted out onto a spatula for easy application. There’s also an app that can help prescribe the ideal blend according to your skin type. Romy HyLab, £350, romy.paris

An astonishing piece of design, this 55” transparent OLED TV conceals all the ports and processors neatly in the base stand, leaving the 5.7mm thick screen completely clear when turned off, helping it to blend neatly into the background. Aside from its clever disappearing trick, the Mi TV can display 1.07 billion colours with 150,000:1 contrast ratio, has a super fast 120Hz refresh rate for incredible colours and motion, plus Dolby Atmos

S M A R T S K I N C A R E support for the best in surround sound. Xiaomi Mi TV LUX, £5,500, mi.com

Mood-boosting lamp

Lumie’s latest therapy lamp has been designed to stimulate and calm you throughout the day, thanks to a range of modes including a realistic Day Mode with powerful 10,000 lux brightness, and a low-blue light that adds a little serenity to your evenings, while a soft backlight replicates the natural glow of dusk and dawn. Lumie Halo, £199, lumie.com

S E C O N D - G E N S P E A K E R The latest upgrade to Google’s collection of voice-controlled speakers has a discreet clothc o v e r e d l oz e n g e i n either Chalk or Charcoal, with a casing made from 70% recycled plastic. It can be used to stream music, either through voice commands or from an app, acts as a font of knowledge, secretary, w e a t h e r p e r s o n , n ewsreade r or hom e control hub, being able to control compatible smart home products, such as your heating and lighting. G oogle N est Audio, £89, google.com

M Y F I R S T H I - F I This battery powered interactive speaker for kids is a screen-free, easy-to-use box of fun that lets even very young children (up to age eight) choose what they want to listen to without them needing to be online. Just slot their chosen plastic card – loads available include Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton, Paddington and Gruffalo stories, podcasts, games and songs – into the cute white box and away they go. It also has an app for parental control, it can stream content from your phone if you wish and you – or maybe grandparents – can also record your own stories onto a blank card for your child to enjoy. Yoto Player, £79.99, yotoplay.com

N E V E R M I S S A C O U R I E R One of the best-looking video doorbells on the market, Netatmo’s waterproof wired design will alert you to any visitors, offering up full HD video quality and good night vision direct to your smartphone. You can talk to people if you’re not there – or otherwise engaged – and clever ‘people detection’ differentiates between someone and the nosy neighbourhood cat, keeping false alarms to a minimum. Best of all, you get all these features with no additional subscription cost and video can be saved onto a built-in memory card. Netatmo Smart Video Doorbell, £269.99, netatmo.com

C U S T O M I S A B L E S H O W E R I N G Thanks to the inclusion of a Wi-Fi module and fullyfeatured smartphone app, Roca’s latest shower can be c o n t r o l l e d w i r e l e s s l y throughout the home. Use the pre-heat option from under your duvet to warm the water automatically before you have a chance to get the chills, personalise settings for different family members, with favourite flow rates and temperatures (you can limit temperature for children to avoid scalding), and you can even set a duration if someone’s guilty of spending hours in the shower. Roca Smart Shower, from £2,751, uk.roca.com S TAT E M E N T C O O L I N G Clad in textured stainless steel, LG SIGNATU RE’s flagship fridge-freezer (A++, 569litres, 91cm wide) brings professional cooling and intelligent design features to your kitchen, with intelligent air filters that remove up to 99.9% of bacteria and doorin-door design with ingenious InstaView. LG SIGNATURE LSR100, £5,999, lg.com/uk

3 OF THE BEST

High-tech home of fice lamps

1Sm a r t er l ig ht i ng Dyson’s Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connected lamp offers task, ambient and indirect light. It also tracks the sun’s position in the sky and adjusts the lamp’s colour temperature and brightness (2700K to 6500K) throughout the day, so if a cloud covers the sun, the lamp compensates. Dyson Lightcycle Morph, £499, dyson.co.uk

2E a s y re ad i ng A futuristic LED lamp specifically designed to make reading from screens more comfortable. It bathes you in a vast 90cm wide pool of light – 150% more than standard desk lamps – and adjusts brightness and colour (2700K-5700K) to suit your task. BenQ WiT e-Reading Desk Lamp, £169, benq.eu

3Wi rele s s cha r g i ng Simply place any Qi compatible smartphone on the lamp’s base and it will charge wirelessly, helping to reduce unnecessary cable clutter in your office or bedroom. Light is adjustable (3000K-6000K) and there’s even a sleep mode with a warmer glow to help improve your sleep. Koble Polestar LED, £80, heals.com

N A T U R A L LY P U R I F I E D A I R A simply brilliant new air purifier that uses natural materials to help filter your home’s air and also looks like a space-aged terrarium. Instead of plastic filters it uses a combination of moss, coconut, carbon and silk to filter up to 36m2 per hour. T h e d e s i g n e r s h a v e estimated that the filter is as powerful as having 3,043 houseplants, all without the need to water or prune, and when the filters do need to b e re p l a ce d , th ey wi l l compost down in a couple of months. Briiv, pre-order £249, indiegogo.com

C I N E M A Q U A L I T Y S O U N D The latest addition to Sonos’ audio collection is a Dolby Atmos-enabled soundbar that will completely transform how your TV sounds, offering roomfilling, surround sound without the need for dozens of separate speakers. Measuring 8.7x114.2x 11.6cm, it ’s surprisingly slim, especially as it contains eight separate woofers and three tweeters all angled to fire sound forward, left/right and also up to the ceiling to create an allencompassing effect, especially when watching fast-paced films. Sonos Arc, £799, sonos.com

F U T U R E F I T N E S S This interactive fitness studio combines dance classes, Pilates, weight training, cardio workouts and yoga in a single wallmounted unit. Designed by Yves Béhar, it ’s based around a mirrored 43-inch 4K UHD display with voice control, touchscreen, webcams and a library of fitness sessions. It’s available in two versions: Screen for face-toface free weight and floor-style classes; and Full Studio, which transforms the mirror into a full home gym, with collapsible weight bench, retractable pulley arms for strength training, hidden free weights and even a ballet barre. FORME Life Home Studio, from around £45 per month, formelife.com

Screen break

Most of us will probably admit to spending too much time in front of a screen, but this addiction could be doing us damage. There’s a direct correlation between screen time and migraines and your dev ice’s blue light has been show n to impact on your natural sleep hormones. Need a little help putting your phone down? Consider setting up screen-time alerts where you’ ll be able to track how much time you spend on your device, even limit the apps you can use during the day if you find yourself easily distracted by social media at work.

PET TECH A stylish pet bowl with a hugely practical secret; it has a built-in weigh scale (gram/lbs/oz/ml) and LCD display that makes it easy to measure out your pet’s food. The stainlesssteel bowl is removable and there’s a partner app that helps you keep track of your pet ’s feeding routines. Petkit S m a r t Bowl, £40, petkit.co.uk

DESIGNER INSIGHT B e n j a m i n H u b e r t , d e s i g n director at Layer (layerdesign. com) a nd desig n e r of th e Beosound Balance speaker for Bang & Olufsen (bang-olufsen. com), looks to the future of home technology. ‘There’s a movement towards sof te nin g te ch n olo gy a n d allowing it to blend into whichever environment you spend a lot of time in; whether that ’s the workplace, a home or hotel. We expect our technology to perform and do some pretty incredible things, but are increasingly wanting them to work in harmony with everything else. Brands like Google have really led the way, but there’s still a way to go.

‘Wellness and wellbeing is moving everything forward, and with some major emotional drivers at the moment [COVID-19 and climate change] I see a shift to creating products that are warm and inviting, soothing the user, helping to create a happier state of mind.’

D E S I G N I N D E T A I L : C L E V E R H O M E S E C U R I T Y

While a basic alarm with a siren box on the front of your house remains an extremely effective home security deterrent, the latest modular smart home solutions give you the chance to monitor your home without the need for a costly installation.

Designed to be plug-andplay devices that require e a s y m o u n t i n g a n d connecting to your Wi-Fi, you can choose from smart video doorbells, all-in-one security devices such as Canary (canary.is), motion and window/door sensors and smart door locks.

The list goes on, but all t h e s e d e v i c e s f e e d info rm atio n b a ck to a smartphone app, which then alerts you to unusual activity or simply that a courier is trying to deliver a parcel.

Compatibility is key with many smart home gadgets, and brands like Ring and Nest now sell a host of products that link with other smart devices such as Philips Hue lighting, meaning you can set up security ‘recipes’ such as a clever holiday mode that turns on random lights around the house if someone approaches the front door.

DreamKITCH E N S. MAD E R EAL .