There are moments in this industry when an award represents far more than a trophy. Moments when recognition feels like a marker of change rather than a single win. For Faradite, receiving a Best New Hardware accolade at the 2025 CEDIA Smart Home Awards was one of those moments.
On the surface, the award celebrates our product: the Motion Sensor 360, a fully plaster-in, ultra-discreet motion sensor developed specifically for high-end residential projects. But when we delve down into the thinking behind it, it becomes clear that this recognition is about something broader for us and our industry. It reflects a growing shift in how smart home technology is designed, specified, and ultimately welcomed into design-led properties.
Our Award-Winning Product
Motion sensors, after all, are nothing new. For decades, they’ve quietly done their job in hallways, bathrooms, and utility spaces. Yet despite their usefulness, they’ve often been treated as a necessary compromise; functional but rarely admired and often thought of as a visually intrusive fixture that designers tolerate rather than embrace.
With years of experience and expertise under our belts, we chose to challenge that assumption. Instead of focusing solely on performance metrics or detection ranges, the question became a more fundamental one: Why should a motion sensor still look like a motion sensor at all?
Our answer was a product that could disappear entirely into the architecture. Fully plastered into the ceiling, sitting flush, with no visible bezel or visual interruption, and so the Motion Sensor 360 was designed to work with the space, rather than against it. In high-end projects where interior designers are often involved long before homeowners ever see a ceiling plan, this seemingly small change carries real significance.
It’s an approach that has resonated strongly with the smart home community. There’s a common misconception that complexity is a drawback. But in this industry, complexity is often where value lives. A plaster-in sensor requires coordination, foresight, and careful placement, which are exactly the areas where experienced integrators differentiate themselves. Importantly, this product was never intended for mass market appeal. It wasn’t designed to be quick or DIY-friendly. It was built deliberately for the smart home channel, recognizing that high-end projects demand a different level of craftsmanship and collaboration.
Another telling aspect of the Motion Sensor 360’s development is how many people were considered along the way. Not just homeowners and integrators, but the trades who interact with the product on-site every day. Plasterers, painters, interior designers, and integrators all play a role in how a product succeeds in the real world. From plaster-friendly finishes and paintable surfaces to magnetic removal mechanisms, the sensor reflects an understanding of life on-site, not just lab conditions.
That attention to detail matters. In design-led projects, consistency is everything. A single surface-mounted sensor in an otherwise seamless ceiling can feel like an oversight rather than a choice. Our approach removes that tension entirely.
Why the CEDIA Smart Home Awards Matter
Awards can sometimes feel like marketing noise, but the CEDIA Smart Home Awards carry a different weight. Judged by industry peers, this recognition speaks directly to credibility within the channel. For us, this win wasn’t simply validation of one product; it was confirmation that designing for the smart home ecosystem, with all its challenges and collaborators, still matters.
It also marks an important milestone in a longer journey. After previous finalist positions, this award stands as one of our company’s most significant achievements to date, particularly as we continue to expand our presence beyond Europe, helping to widen our reach and visibility across wider markets.
Our CEDIA Smart Home Award win serves as a reminder that the best technology doesn’t need to shout. It listens to designers, architects, integrators, and homeowners and then quietly does its job better than what came before.
And sometimes, that’s exactly what excellence looks like.
If you’d like to enter the 2026 CEDIA Smart Home Awards, visit www.cedia.org/awards, but hurry! The deadline for Integrator categories is April 24, 2026, and the deadline for the Manufacturer, Business, and Individual categories is May 24, 2026.
