Future-Proof Your Home: The 3 Smart Home Upgrades Every House Needs in 2026

It’s that time of year when we look ahead to the possibilities—a new year with a new slate. If you’ve delved into smart home living, you know the extreme convenience it provides. Lighting, shades, climate, and home entertainment are all managed from a user-friendly touchscreen. Press a button, and the lights align for the occasion, the shades rise, and your favorite playlist streams through your home. 

And all because you pressed, “Entertain.” 

So, how can automated living get any better? 

This year, three smart home upgrades are taking center stage. At Whitaker Technologies, we partner with Control4, a world leader in home automation. In 2025, they released a new operating system that people are rushing to adopt. 

Homeowners are also looking to elevate their home entertainment while keeping it smart and ensuring the backbone for their smart home is robust and sustainable. 

Let’s take a look at these three awe-inspiring upgrades for 2026 and how homeowners in Philadelphia, PA, and the surrounding areas are putting them to use.

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Control4 X4 for Extreme Personalization

In 2025, Control4 unveiled its biggest upgrade since 2019. Its goal? To make managing a smart home even simpler and more intuitive. 

One of the most convenient aspects of a Control4 smart home is the ability to press a single button to manage multiple systems. For instance, when you press “Good Morning,” it prompts the shades to open, certain lights to slowly brighten, ambient music to stream through your home, and the climate to adjust. But there may come a time when you want to start your day a little differently. Maybe you want the spa heated, the coffee made, and the outdoor TV tuned to the morning news. Life, after all, is anything but constant. 

In the past, you would have had to call your smart home integrator, schedule an appointment, and have them reprogram your system. Now, you can do it yourself in minutes with Control4 X4’s new interface. 

Whole-Home Audio for an Incredible Experience

Whole-home audio, driven by smart home trends, is evolving from a luxury niche into an increasingly popular must-have home entertainment system. Can you imagine your favorite musician greeting you when you walk into your home after a long day at work? Music streams through in-ceiling speakers or a wireless system, following you from room to room in high-fidelity clarity. 

But it’s more than music. This same system brings surround sound to rooms with TVs and automatically turns on your 3 pm podcast. Integrated with a smart home system, you can manage audio effortlessly.

A Robust Home Network as the Backbone

If you’ve continued to embrace smart home living, adding smart systems to the mix several times a year, you may have noticed they’re not as reliable as they once were. This could mean it’s time to update your network. Your home network is the backbone of your smart home, connecting the many devices to the home automation platform and to each other. 

This level of connectivity requires a professional-grade, future-proof home network. Robust, scalable, and flexible, it can handle the increasing connectivity and bandwidth demands of today’s smart homes. 

At Whitaker Technologies, we create smart homes that are as sophisticated as they are easy to control. To learn more about the many possible upgrades or to schedule a complimentary consultation, contact Whitaker Technologies today.