I’ve been thinking and talking a lot lately about the intersection between tech and interior design. As our lives become ever more connected, our homes do too! It’s taken a little while for certain sectors of the tech industry to catch up with the preferences of certain decor perfectionists around here (cough, cough) but thankfully the market is now awash with design driven solutions for all manner of digital dilemmas! The latest to make my life a little easier—and a lot more stylish!—is eero. I’ve been using their Whole Home Wifi System for both my home and office wifi, and as a result I’ve waved goodbye to all my WiFi woes!
Not surprisingly, my complaints with in-home connectivity devices have always started at the level of aesthetics. Sure, we’ve had some pretty strong WiFi routers in the past few years, but their power has always come with a price: a giant, ugly black box and a zillion attendant wires that I could never completely hide out of site. The eero system, on the other hand, is practically invisible! It consists of a sleek white base unit that’s less than 5 x 5 inches square, and that connects in any room that has Ethernet wiring. Then there’s the eero Beacons, which plug into any outlet and partner with the base unit to expand your network into every nook and cranny of your home. The entire system is so unobtrusive that Ivan couldn’t figure out why I was taking random photos around our house; he didn’t even notice that I’d set up the eero and was shooting it for this post!
Speaking of setup, in the past I used to feel like I needed a PhD to get my in-home WiFi up and running. But with eero, the entire process is plug and play. Just download the eero app, which walks you through the process step-by-step, and within ten minutes the whole network is up and running at top speed. Because the eero and its Beacons learn from your space, devices, and network usage, your whole home will have coverage have exactly where and when you need it. No more dead zones or drop-offs in speed no matter how many users you’ve got—which is key since both Ivan and I work from home. Plus now our Netflix binges stream without a hitch!
Yet as much as we love having eero at home, it’s been a godsend at Light Lab! Not only do we need top WiFi performance when we’re working there ourselves, but we frequently rent to other creatives who depend on us for a fast and reliable connection. With eero we’re able to set up guest networks and extra layers of security, plus the Beacons allow for full network coverage of our entire 2000 square feet of studio space without marring the design sensibility we’ve worked so hard to establish and maintain.
But best of all is the eero app, which notifies us the moment there’s any funny business and enables us to diagnose and fix issues remotely. During a recent heat wave, the power at the studio went off while we were out of town. Because the eero app pinged us to let us know that the WiFi had gone out, we were able to sort things out with the utilities company in time for a renter the following day. Had we not known about the outage, our renter would have shown up to a space without electricity. And truly, that’s the marker of the very best tech and design solutions: they solve problems you didn’t even know you had!
Photos: Anne Sage. Disclosure: I partnered with eero to concept, style, shoot, write, edit, and share this post. All opinions are and always will be my own. Thank you for supporting the brands that enable me to bring you fresh inspiration daily!