Serena Smart Wood Blinds – The Smartest Purchase for Window Covering Upgrades!

Disclosure: We received a media discount on our Serena Wood Blinds order. All opinions are our own.

We’ve reached the tenth month of 2020, and if you are like me, you have spent MUCH more time in your home this year than you have in years past. This time gave me the opportunity to organize, decorate, and think about all the home improvement projects I wanted to tackle. One of these projects was upgrading the blinds in my home office. The previous blinds were here when we purchased our home a few years ago, and they have always been on my list to eventually upgrade. They were corded blinds and never quite sat perfectly horizontally, and the slats themselves were an inexpensive imitation wood that just did not have the uniformed look I was hoping for. Sitting in this office more than I ever have only magnified my disappointment with these blinds.

When I discovered the new  smart wood blinds from the Serena window coverings family I knew it was perfect time to upgrade, and jumped at the opportunity to do so.

As is the case with all the other Serena and Lutron products I have in my home, the Serena smart wood blinds make my home look more welcoming and also help me control the lighting in my room with so much ease.

Get this: with new features such as Natural Light Optimization and the Façade Finder, Serena smart wood blinds can be customized to automatically tilt throughout the day based on position of the sun to effortlessly minimize sunlight and maximize comfort throughout the home – talk about the perfect solution to your Zoom call background lighting woes as we continue to work from home! Check out this video HERE so you can see these in action. Must have home improvement!!

We found it easy to shop for our smart wood blinds and to install them ourselves. You can select an inside- or outside-mount, valance style, and customize the color of your wood blinds. I have friends who purchased their Serena Shades and had them professionally installed for the ultimate ease in installation, but my husband and I had no issues installing these smart wood blinds in one shot. The blinds arrived so carefully packaged so that there were no knicks or dents in the wood during shipping. The quality of the wood is beautiful, and I selected an off white hue to complement our gray walls and off white trim.

After they were unpacked, it just took a minute to orient which side faced front, where we should mount, and voila. We opted for the battery-powered units, and got the batteries in and we were ready to mount. Once we got the first blind up, the other two took mere minutes!

We connected the blinds to our Lutron app, which we already use to control our Serena Shade in our living room and several lamps in our home. The app has access to our location, and by granting access the app was able to understand our “facing direction” to determine which windows were facing North, South, etc., which is useful for the optimization. Two of our blinds are facing Northeast and the other is East, so it is great to see the two blinds open when it is optimal for Northeast light, and soon thereafter the East-facing blind changes its tilt.

It sounds so simple, but not having to open the blinds in the morning has been a really welcome saved step, especially compared to having to finagle my corded blinds each morning to get them to appear somewhat straight! I know that every morning they will open to let in the natural light, and at sunset they will shut and give us privacy for the evening. Trust me – this is a feature you are going to wonder how you lived without once you install these smart wood blinds! It also offers us a sense of security knowing we can control the blinds while we are away from home. We always struggled with leaving the blinds open or closed while we were away, and while we would typically opt for closed, that meant anyone driving by our home during the daytime would know it has been shut up for some time. Now we can control our street-facing wood blinds (and our existing Serena shade in our other street-facing living room window) whenever we are not at home.

I cannot recommend these smart wood blinds highly enough! Please check out all the solutions for your home that Serena and Lutron offer as you consider your next home upgrades.

Lorianne Lacey