More and more devices are getting smart functionality, allowing you to tie them into your home in general, and automate things based on things like your location, your activity, and so on. Smart lighting is a major aspect of the smart home. But there are two components to that — lights themselves, and blinds. Eve is hoping to address the latter with its latest HomeKit-enabled product, called the Eve MotionBlinds.

Now, Eve is actually building the tech inside the blinds, like the motor, while other companies are taking care of the styling and fabrics. In this case, Swedish company OmniaBlinds is developing the window covering, powered by Eve’s tech. Note, we’re actually reviewing a demo unit of the blinds, which have a special stand to be set up on a table.

OmniaBlinds with Eve MotionBlinds

OmniaBlinds are the first iteration of Eve’s MotionBlinds, offering a ton of customizability, and the ability to add your blinds to Apple’s HomeKit.

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Pros

Highly customizable
Work very well
Easy to install
Manual controls
Thread support

Cons

Antennas look bad
Expensive

Order from OmniaBlinds

OmniaBlinds with Eve MotionBlinds design

These blinds are designed by OmniaBlinds, and as such, you would expect them to look pretty good. Thankfully, they do. The blinds are built with nice brushed metal hardware. And, our review unit has a nice white fabric that decently blocks light when closed.

Of course, the design of the blinds is super subjective — and ultimately, you’ll buy blinds that fit your home’s decor. Build quality, however, is a little less subjective, and these blinds seem relatively well-built.

These blinds are built for both manual and smart use. They have a pull cord on the side that can be pulled to open or close the blinds, and hidden inside the handle of that cord, you’ll find the HomeKit code. Handy!

On the side of the blinds, you’ll also notice two small wires. I originally assumed they were there to wire the blinds into a home and avoid having to recharge the battery. Actually, however, they’re antennas for Thread and the optional remote control. It’s entirely possible that Eve had no other option but to include these antennas, but they look pretty bad, and most will want to find a way to tuck them away upon installation.

Generally, we found these blinds to be quite well-designed and able to handle day-to-day use without any issue. You’ll want to tweak the design based on your home, though. You can customize all sorts of metrics on the OmniaBlinds website, including the side of the motor, the width, the color of the hardware, and more.

Eve MotionBlinds features

The reason to buy these blinds over others, of course, is the fact that they integrate with HomeKit. Note, they only integrate with HomeKit for now, but that will hopefully change once Matter becomes available.

Adding the blinds to HomeKit is as simple as any other device. Open up the Home app and scan the code, then follow the on-screen instructions to name the device and add any automations. You can also add the blinds in the Eve app, if you want. But most will probably just want to add them directly to the Home app.

Once added, you can tap the tile in Home to open or close the blinds, or hold the tile to set a specific height. I like that you can set the specific height of the blinds, but I wish you could do it manually. For example, it would be nice if you could pull down quickly to open or close the blinds fully, or pull down and hold to set the height.

Automating the blinds is pretty easy, too. For example, you can set the blinds to automatically open at a specific time, and close at sunset. You can add your location to the mix too. So, you can set the blinds to only open if you’re home, otherwise stay closed. Of course, you can also use the blinds with Siri. You can ask Siri to open or close them completely, or open to a certain amount.

The motor definitely makes noise, but it’s not overly loud, and only lasts for a few seconds. I found it to be relatively quick at opening and closing the blinds.

Conclusions

The OmniaBlinds, powered by Eve MotionBlinds, are a great way to get customizable, high-end smart blinds that you can control with the rest of your smart home. They’re pretty expensive, and it will cost most users a few thousand dollars to deck out their whole home. But if you like the design and want smart functionality, they may be worth the cost.

The competition

There are other HomeKit-enabled blinds out there, with similar smart functionality. But few of them are as customizable. The most notable are the Ikea Fyrtur blinds. They’re quite a bit cheaper, but don’t offer as many options, colors, and so on. For those truly customizing their home for the long haul, the OmniaBlinds are a better option.