The Best Technology for a Healthy Home

In today’s busy world, there’s a lot to keep up with. Whether working from home or juggling the hectic schedules of family appointments, the little chores that help keep the household healthy often slip further down the to-do list than we want.

Thankfully, technology has stepped up to help with a host of products designed to keep your home cleaner and your family healthier. Whether auto-sensing monitors or set-temperature heating elements to kill germs, the best healthy home technology offers gadgets to help you clean every room of the house.

Clean Products for a Healthy Home

Clean and healthy products are those that use technology to help you and your household stay healthy. They make daily tasks safer, quicker, and more efficient. It means less time spent cleaning up after messy fingerprints and germs in every room of the house, from the front entry way to the bathrooms.

To better understand the convenience and importance of healthy technology in the home, it is helpful to know how they are used in your home and the impact they can have. Many clean products are entirely preventative options, offering healthy, touchless, hands-free options, while others focus on superior disinfection and hygienic clean up. Take a look at how to use these ideas in every room of the home to find the best fit for your household’s busy lifestyle.

Entryway and Foyer

The health of the home can start at the front door. Look for smart hardware and lighting solutions that keep family and guests safer from the moment they arrive.

Touchless Lighting Solutions

The right lighting for the front porch and walkway provides a clear path to prevent trips and falls, as well as plenty of illumination to see by when looking for the door key. There are multiple ways to make sure the porch light is always on when needed, thanks to touchless outdoor lighting solutions that allow you on-demand, hands-free control.

• Motion Sense Lighting – Available in many decor styles to match your home’s design, motion sense technology detects movement and turns on for a set length of time.
• Smart Home Lighting – There are a variety of features available with Smart Home lights, from voice-activation, to easy-to-set on/off schedules, and user-friendly app controls for your phone or tablet. Smart home lights can even be integrated with devices through Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.
• Dusk to Dawn Lighting – With dusk to dawn lighting, outdoor light fixtures turn on automatically when needed. The built-in sensors monitor changes in the outdoor natural lighting, adjusting from day to night, or even overcast conditions.

These outdoor lighting options can be positioned where they are most needed around the walkways, driveways, and paths of your property to ensure they are safe to walk without injury and well-lit for security purposes. Whether looking for post-lighting along a fence, landscape lighting, flood lamps, or wall sconces for the porch, touchless lights help keep your family and guests safe in all outdoor lighting conditions

Connected Entry

Another entry feature that can protect your family with a simple update is the door hardware. There are two ways to upgrade to a connected entry hardware system. The technology of a connected hardware update allows members of the household easy, touch-free entry into the home via app access on their phones or the proximity sensors on a keyfob. There’s no need to handle dirty keys or even touch the lock.

One connected entry option is to go for a keyless entry lock, which incorporates different types of technology to provide alternate ways to secure your home. Look for a new smart lock that can be used with either WIFI or Bluetooth connections, allowing the door to be locked or unlocked via a phone app, remote control, or even a proximity sensor.

The healthier, seamless technology of electronic locks provide quick keypad access. Grime-resistant, long-lasting finishes keep the few touch-surfaces easily cleaned. Keyless electronic entry sets can be found in every design and style type, including deadbolts, handlesets, knobs, and even levers.

Antimicrobial Protection

Outside entry door hardware update options include antimicrobial door handles, locks, and other hardware pieces with an antimicrobial finish, such as those with Kwickset Microban protection. The right antimicrobial products help prevent the spread of unwanted germs and viruses that can multiply on unprotected hardware finishes.

Microban door hardware is an easy home upgrade that just requires a new front door lock and handle set. With Microban coating, high-touch surfaces like deadbolts and doorknobs are protected with silver ions permanently bonded to the hardware coating, which adds durability and strength to the finish.

Choose the right clean products for your entryway update and keep some of the germs and grime from even entering your home at all.

Living room and Den

Common areas and family gathering spaces like the living room should be a safe and healthy place for everyone. Healthy home technology helps to keep the family room comfortable and ready to use by streamlining cleanliness and purifying home spaces. Simple changes such as upgrading to touchless indoor lighting or bringing in other smart tech devices can reduce the number of high-touch, germ-collecting surfaces and keep the space cleaner

A good place to start is to implement a few indoor air quality solutions. Make sure the air is as safe as possible with healthy tech products like air purifiers, humidifiers, and dehumidifiers, used as needed to match the needs of your home’s environment.

Air Purifiers

Air purifiers help filter out dust, germs, and bacteria from the air. They make breathing easier during allergy season, or year-round if the family has pets. Air purifiers are also useful indoor air quality products to bring home if you live in an area near regular construction or traffic smells, smog, and even smoke.

They push air through a filter that traps airborne particles to remove them from the air in the room. In order to be most effective, make sure to choose an air purifier strong enough to move the amount of air required for the room dimensions. For more information on the impact of the room size on the effectiveness of an air purifier, check out our article on choosing the best air filter for your home.

Humidifiers

For drier climates, a humidifier can be another useful addition to the living room or den, even a bedroom. If there’s a lot of static in the air, it’s a sign that you need a humidifier because the air in your home is too dry. Keeping the air cool is easier with a humidifier, as it puts moisture back into the air to be cooled via the AC system or fans.

Too much dry air can start to pull moisture from the room, leaving the people in it feeling hot and uncomfortable, with chapped skin and painful sinuses. Other health symptoms may show up in the household if there isn’t enough moisture in the air. You should add a humidifier to the household health regime if you or your family regularly show signs of health challenges like:

• Allergies or asthma
• Congestion and coughing
• Dry sinuses and nose bleeds
• Regular runny nose

There are many benefits of a humidifier and they help keep your home comfortable and the air clean and cool. For more detailed information on choosing a humidifier, check out our humidifier buying guide. Always monitor the humidity level in your home to make sure it stays in a healthy range. Too little moisture in the air is a problem, but too much humidity carries its own risks, too.

Dehumidifier

If your living room or family room has the opposite problem, with heavy moisture in the air or sticky walls, bring in a dehumidifier. They help prevent moisture buildup in rooms with little air flow, such as basement or subterranean rooms.

Too much moisture can lead to property damage from mold and mildew. These corrosive problems also cause discomfort and pain for allergy sufferers or anyone with a compromised immune system. Unseen mold can make people sick, with everything from allergy and asthma attacks to long-lasting migraine and lung problems.

High humidity is generally uncomfortable. However, it is also easily fixed with the right sized dehumidifier for the space. As with all indoor air quality clean technology, know the dimensions of the room before you shop for a dehumidifier to help ensure it can process the appropriate amount of air flow to achieve the best results.

Kitchen and Dining Room

Other family gathering zones of the home have their own clean tech upgrade opportunities. The kitchen offers an assortment of new smart home technology to help protect against the spread of germs. Turn high-touch surfaces into hands-free, touchless alternatives, especially at the kitchen faucet. That’s where touch/touchless kitchen faucets can really shine.

If you’re wondering what’s the difference between touch vs touchless faucet technology, the secret is in the name.

• A touch faucet responds to the natural conductivity of human touch and allows you to turn on the water flow with a bump of the wrist or arm at an easily accessible point on the faucet body, rather than relying on the use of a handle.
• A touchless faucet, in contrast, will activate the water flow by infrared motion sensor. These faucets detect the wave of a hand or the position of a glass or dirty pan under the tap and turn the water on automatically.

When weighing the pros and cons of touchless kitchen faucets, make sure to consider how each faucet type works and which will perform best in your household. A touchless faucet makes things easy when filling up a pot or a glass of water, while a touch faucet with an extending, pull-down faucet head makes quicker work of rinsing dishes.

Smart home technology has been developed to provide voice-activated faucets. These voice controlled, touchless, smart faucets are capable of more precise commands thanks to integration with the kitchen Smart Hub. They can turn on or off on command, or the user can direct the faucet to pour a metered, exact amount of water in ounces.

Look to the material of the kitchen sink for an additional healthy boost in the kitchen. Sink materials such as fireclay, quality copper, and quartz have natural antibacterial properties which break up bacterial colonies on the surface. Other sink materials like stainless steel are easy to clean and resist the staining and corrosion of organic chemicals and scratches that could otherwise attract bacteria and stains.

Look for appliances and faucets with finishes on touchable surfaces that are fingerprint resistant. A fingerprint-resistant or smudge-proof faucet or appliance is usually stainless steel or matte finish that has been treated with a sturdy coating to prevent grime and bacteria from getting into the natural porous surface of the metal. These durable finishes make cleanup a breeze with simple soap and water. They can be found on multiple finishes, including stainless and slate, to match your kitchen.

Self-Cleaning Appliances

To save some time and effort, consider self-cleaning appliances, like a self-cleaning range. A self-cleaning oven range has all the convenient features of high-end ranges that make them as easy to use as they are to maintain.

Self-cleaning ovens use heat in order to keep the interior clean and sanitary, requiring an interior temperature of over 880 degrees Fahrenheit for a few hours in order to burn away food debris. Other self-cleaning options include steam settings that take half the time (or less) by pouring water into the bottom of the oven and then setting it to steam clean.

After either self-clean setting, always wipe down the oven interior after the cycle is complete and the oven is cooled. A little old-fashioned elbow-grease is still required, but both options save time and effort in the weekly routine.

Sanitary Dish Settings

Another clean product to incorporate into your kitchen is a dishwasher with a sanitary rinse setting that ensures plates and dishware are germ and food-grime-free before they are put away in cupboards. Using steam and hot water, sanitary rinse dishwashers clean the dinnerware to the surface, with the capacity to disinfect items inside and protect against bacteria such as e-coli and salmonella that can be left behind even on cleaned dishes. The sani-rinse setting on dishwashers heats the water to over 145 degrees Fahrenheit and generally requires a longer wash cycle. This allows a sparkling clean that is safer for everyone, without the requirements of more abrasive cleaning chemicals that may leave harmful residue.

Bathroom and Laundry Room

The worst culprits for bacteria and grime in most households are found in the bathrooms and laundry rooms. These rooms get the dirty jobs, with lots of high-touch surfaces to clean up after. Adding healthy, helpful technology in these areas reduces your family’s exposure to germs and viruses as well as cuts down on cleaning time.

Antimicrobial Faucets

When it comes to finding the healthiest options for your home bathroom, not all faucet finishes are created equal. High quality stainless steel and copper finishes help break up bacteria on the surface of the faucet to keep germs and viruses from growing and spreading. This makes them more sanitary as well as easier to clean. Be on the look out for bathroom faucets with antimicrobial finishes for an extra layer of protection.

Touchless Faucets

Touch/touchless bathroom faucets include many features that make them easy and sanitary to use. No more cleaning up after muddy (or worse) fingerprints on the bathroom faucet with a motion-sensor activated touchless faucet. These timed faucets will keep the water flow going while the active infrared sensors detect movement and shut off within seconds after the user leaves the sink, saving money on the water bill and preventing the risk of sink overflows due to careless family members or curious pets.

Steam Showers and Saunas

With the right smart shower system, even the daily shower routine can go almost completely hands-free. A smart shower can be installed to replace a standard shower system, or the entire shower experience can get an upgrade to a steam shower or a sauna. Voice activated showers include digital shower controls that can be synced to a cellphone or smart home device so there’s no need to touch the faucet handles.

Steam showers have their own health benefits in addition to going touchless. The vapor in these specialized showers is produced by boiling water to no more than 118 degrees Fahrenheit and uses 2 gallons of water or less to keep the temperature high enough to create the luxurious steam in the enclosure. Twenty minutes or less in a steam shower or sauna has been shown to relieve stress, detoxify and improve the skin, and promote muscle strength and recovery.

Additional custom features are available with steam showers and saunas to help build the ultimate home spa experience, from incorporating a tailored light system to adding aromatherapy benefits. You can even install speakers in a shower or sauna enclosure to listen to your favorite music or podcast via Bluetooth as an extra mood booster

Touchless Toilets

Skip the spread of germs with an automatic flush toilet. There are a variety of intelligent toilets to make the “go” a little less of a mess to clean up. This includes fully automatic toilets that provide auto-sensing flush or even touchless toilet seats that open and close without having to touch the lid. Smart toilets have a water-efficient flush that uses less water while keeping the bowl cleaner, requiring less intensive scrubbing during your cleaning routine and bypassing the need for abrasive, harmful chemicals.

To complete the protection, choose a toilet seat with built-in antimicrobial properties to help prevent and reduce the growth of bacteria and other risky microorganisms between cleanings. Other options include lighted toilet seats to make the room less obnoxious on tired eyes for those mid-night bathroom visits

Whether wall-mounted or one-piece, touchless toilets and their accessories come in modern designs to complement the look of any bathroom while being an active part of cutting back on the presence of grime and bacteria.

Bidet Seats

There’s an obvious boost in cleanliness when it comes to the use of a bidet seat. Relying on less toilet paper means fewer germs passing to hands and other surfaces from there. A bidet seat uses cleansing streams of water from under the seat to offer an all-over personal-hygiene solution in a standard bathroom feature that doesn’t require any extra cleaning or maintenance than any other toilet. For more considerations about upgrading to a bidet seat, we put together an article on the benefits of using a bidet or bidet seat in the home.

Humidity Sensing Fans

In rooms with excessive moisture in the air from sinks and showers, an exhaust fan is an important addition to help prevent mold and bacteria buildup on walls and high-touch surfaces. In a kitchen, the range hood takes care of smells and moisture, but the laundry and bathroom require something strong enough to move moisture out quickly, requiring larger humidity sensing fans with a higher capacity CFM.

These ceiling-mounted fans move air into ducting that connects to an exterior vent and expels heated, humid air directly outdoors to prevent it damaging the walls or attic spaces. Make sure the duct is large enough for the airflow required for the bathroom or laundry room square footage. We put together a bathroom exhaust fan buying guide to help take some of the guesswork out of these details.

Most automatic bathroom fans have a variety of features to choose from to make the fan performance match your household use. Some come with built in lighting fixtures to blend the exhaust fan with the bathroom design. Other options include the motion sensing bathroom fan which activates based on light or movement in the room.

These fans offer a humidity sensing switch, so the exhaust fan will automatically turn on when the humidity level in the room gets too high. Humidity sensing bathroom fans also include a manual fan switch, as well as a timer function to reduce the number of touches while still allowing you to control the length of time even the best humidity sensing fan is left running unattended. Home ventilation solutions help keep the air clean and are an automated way to improve your home’s indoor air quality.

Antibacterial Exhaust Fans

Mold and mildew that can cling and grow in perpetually moist areas. Exhaust fans can be used in either the bathroom or the laundry room to help clear moisture out of the air to keep the air cleaner and easier to breathe and to keep surfaces clear of mold. For an extra level of protection against bacteria growing in rooms prone to humidity and moisture, look for antibacterial exhaust fans with a near-UV wavelength LED light option.

Illuminating surfaces with light on the UV spectrum helps to kill bacteria by triggering a toxic response inside the bacteria growth that prevents it from growing and spreading. Antibacterial exhaust fans combine the dehumidifying fan with an LED-powered UV lamp safe for humans, pets, and plants, in a design that helps prevent mold and fungi in tile grout and other areas of the room. Some existing fans can be easily retrofitted to include the specialized lamps, so if the old, noisy fan is in need of an update an antibacterial exhaust fan is worth considering.

Steam Technology Laundry

Of course, the laundry room’s stars of the show are the clothes washer and dryer. Smart home washer and dryers can be programmed via tablet or phone app to help run the daily chores on your schedule, whether that means setting a timer to turn the laundry on before you get home from work or keeping the dryer doing intermittent cycles to prevent wrinkles and mildew on the clothes.

High-end laundry appliances offer a steam setting to help get your soiled clothes cleaner and stay fresh longer. Steam technology laundry appliances offer settings that use the power of hot vapor to help steam wash clothes. A steam technology washer uses the high temperatures of steam (up to over 200 degrees Fahrenheit) to loosen stains and grime from clothes fibers, helping to kill bacteria. It also warms the water during the cycle to help remove germs and dissolve the detergent to better ensure the cleanliness of the household’s clothes.

The steam technology dryer helps keep the fibers loose and clean during the drying cycle, as well as remove the leftover residue from laundry detergent and softeners. This final step makes steam technology laundry appliances a must-have for families with allergies or sensitivities to smells and chemicals, even taking care of the annoying irritation of pet dander that can otherwise linger on clothes. The steam settings on the washer and dryer also serve to keep the machines sanitary, with a self-cleaning cycle to help cut down on hard water spots and buildup that prevent your laundry from coming clean.

The Healthy Advantage

The changes outlined here are all effective ways to update your home against the everyday risks of germs and bacteria with the added whole-home benefits of boosting your overall security, productivity, and even getting the most out of your home’s energy use. The right appliances, hardware, and lighting choices can make a big difference to the look of a room’s design. Updated faucets add value and style to your kitchen or bath. There are many reasons to incorporate these simple but impactful upgrades, and cleaner, healthy home technology is the best way to keep your household comfortable and protected every day.