In its 2025 Outdoor Technology Deep Dive, CE Pro found that the median value of an outdoor technology project rose 22% in 2024, from $11,668 to $14,201, while three-quarters of the integrators surveyed expected their outdoor business to grow during 2025.

For integrators, architects and designers, that creates opportunities to treat gardens, terraces and pool areas as extensions of the home's entertainment environment. The challenge is to deliver audio, video, lighting and control that work together while coping with very different conditions from those found indoors.

Audio, alfresco

Outdoor audio now encompasses everything from architectural speakers to distributed landscape systems designed to disappear among planting and other garden features.

Rather than relying on a small number of speakers playing at high volume, integrators can distribute speakers around the space to create more consistent coverage. The result can also be less visually intrusive – an important consideration when technology needs to complement the landscape rather than dominate it.

Audio and lighting are also being designed together as part of more integrated outdoor environments. Recent residential projects have combined landscape lighting and distributed audio within the same outdoor design, while products such as Episode Radiance, now offered by ISE exhibitor ADI | Snap One, bring the two systems onto shared infrastructure.

The opportunity is not simply to add music to the garden. It is to design the audio as part of the outdoor environment from the beginning.

Cinema under the stars

Outdoor viewing also needs technology designed for its environment.

Purpose-built outdoor TVs are available for shaded, partial-sun and full-sun locations, combining weather resistance with displays designed to remain visible under challenging ambient light. Control4's guidance on outdoor entertainment, for example, distinguishes between outdoor TVs intended for full sun and those designed for shaded areas.

Projectors remain another option, particularly when a very large image is required, but brightness, screen position, ambient light and protection from the weather all need to be considered as part of the design.

Audio completes the experience, whether through installed landscape speakers or, when noise needs to be kept down, personal listening. Sonos Ace, for example (Sonos is another ISE exhibitor), supports Dolby Atmos spatial audio and dynamic head tracking, giving viewers an alternative to running an outdoor speaker system late into the evening.

The network needs to go outside too

The most impressive outdoor AV installation will quickly become frustrating if streaming or control becomes unreliable as soon as someone walks out of the house.

Outdoor connectivity therefore needs to be considered as part of the network design. Once that infrastructure is in place, the garden can become another integrated zone rather than a collection of standalone devices.

Control platforms can bring outdoor AV, lighting and other systems into the same interface used inside the home. Control4, for example, integrates outdoor TVs, audio and lighting and allows them to be combined into programmed scenes. A single command can start music, change the lighting and activate other outdoor features.

This is where professional integration can make the biggest difference. The objective is not to fill a garden with technology, but to make that technology feel like a natural extension of the experience inside the house.

A growing opportunity for integrators

The commercial case for paying more attention to outdoor technology is becoming stronger. CE Pro's 2025 research found that the median integrator generated almost $130,000 in annual revenue from outdoor installations, while the number of dealers reporting growth in their outdoor business increased by ten percentage points from the previous survey.

Outdoor living itself also remains important to consumers. The International Casual Furnishings Association's 2025 Outdoor Living Trend Report, based on research conducted by Wakefield Research, found that 85% of surveyed households had some form of outdoor space. Among consumers planning improvements, 44% expected to spend more time entertaining outdoors.

For residential technology professionals, the opportunity is to make those spaces work harder. Audio, displays, lighting, networking and control can turn a patio, garden or pool area into a genuine extension of the connected home.

At ISE 2027, residential integrators, architects and designers can explore the technologies making that possible and discover how outdoor spaces are becoming part of the wider whole-home experience.

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Further reading

Find out more about smart homes and buildings at ISE.

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