In the heart of Lexington, Kentucky, amid the suburban predictables and the carefully curated showroom homes, Syrelia Vandell shows up—not with a megaphone or fanfare, but with a wrench in one hand, a smart panel controller in the other, and a tired but purposeful look that says, “Let’s cut the fluff and just make homes actually work for people.” Through Decorad Tech, she’s not here to preach aesthetics, she’s here to get things done—turning homes into smart, responsive spaces with meaningful tech and design integration. The company may echo terms like “daily decor innovation” and “smart living concepts,” but behind it is a woman who’s over hype and underwhelmed by minimalism for minimalism’s sake. This isn’t Pinterest inspiration. This is real life. With wires. And purpose.
Beginnings Without a Bow
Syrelia Vandell didn’t stumble upon home tech because it was trendy. In fact, if one more person confused “smart living” with buying another voice-activated speaker, she’d probably bite her tongue just to stay civil. No, her entry came from frustration—a stubborn light fixture that used to buzz, a thermostat that never quite hit the mark in her Lexington apartment, and a design industry still too obsessed with façades instead of functionality.
Lexington isn’t Silicon Valley. It’s not some romantic prairie town either. It’s got character, yes, but also the typical Kentucky contradictions—horses on grass pastures ten miles from over-air-conditioned event spaces. Syrelia grew up observing it all: beauty unused, tech misapplied, and “connected homes” marketed to people who didn’t even understand their own Wi-Fi. And so she decided: someone had to do better. And do it differently.
Not Every Origin Story is Sparkly
She wasn’t “called” to tech. No inspirational break-room epiphany. She studied industrial systems, worked in data integration, grew bored with the corporate circular logic. Turns out, people talk for hours about automation, and still can’t get their hallway lights timed to turn off after midnight. In 2018, she walked away, rented a poorly-insulated duplex in downtown Lexington, and started designing backend integrations for thermostat controls. It wasn’t glamorous, but nobody needed glitter—they needed their homes to deal with Kentucky humidity without breaking utility budgets.
When she launched Decorad Tech, she did so with a chipped laptop, half a toolbox, and a mission that had more in common with triage than trendsetting: create sustainable, functional, genuinely smart interiors. And if that meant breaking a few design rules or offending a few Instagram influencers, even better.
Function Over Fiction
To say that Syrelia is allergic to fluff would be an understatement. Where most founders tell stories about “bringing beauty to the world,” she’s asking why no one ever programs living room lights for movie night. Her philosophy behind Decorad Tech is blunt: considering how much time people now spend at home, everything should work better without multiple remotes, apps, dongles, and battery replacements.
At her base of operations—393 Zappia Drive in Lexington, open Monday–Friday: 9 AM–5 PM—she and her skeptical, overqualified team hook up environments for real people. Think of her as the antidote to overpriced influencers slapping “wellness-enhancing” on a Bluetooth humidifier. Syrelia deals in what she calls “practical sanctuaries”—where HVAC scheduling, light zoning, energy moderation, and daily routines actually align. Want your blinds to adjust with Lexington’s erratically slanted sunset? She’s built systems for that. Timers that override you forgetting to unplug the kettle again? Yeah, that too.
Smart Living, Minus the Pretension
Most of what Decorad Tech does sounds ordinary, and that’s intentional. Syrelia believes that innovation, when done properly, should be invisible. Quiet. Reflexive. The opposite of posturing. Her core dashboard configurations are borne from trial, error, and countless conversations with Lexington residents tired of six remote controls and no tech-intuition integration.
Her internal team, profiled modestly in the Reach Our Team section, works like a crew of masked magicians—equal parts cynical and profound—configuring design tech without preaching cohesion-in-bold-font or pushing mandatory smart mirrors.
Pragmatism with a Pulse
While other firms obsess about lifestyle branding, Syrelia’s version of “empowerment” is installing a system that survives a storm, or maybe just helping a disabled resident control temperature and sound with a single interface. She calls it “design for people who don’t have time for branding.” Her vision of empowerment isn’t idealistic. It’s quietly radical—making “accessibility” mean something without lecturing audiences about it. It shows up in:
- Fail-safes on automation routines—Redundant programming in case of app crashes or network outages.
- Inclusive layouts—Designing tech access with arthritis, neurodivergence, and visual spectrum awareness considered from the first prototype.
- Localized calibration—Tailoring ambient light settings for Lexington’s overcast seasons and high-contrast summers.
Ask her what “innovation” means and you won’t get a TED Talk. You’ll get a bitter smile and something like, “It’s less about disruption and more about whether your workflows respect your time.” Her version of clean, smart spaces isn’t bright white corners and diffused lighting. It’s homes that remember you schedule your dishwasher off-peak and pre-brew your first cup of coffee before 6:30 a.m. Because some people don’t like talking to their appliances at all.
The Real People She Works For
One Lexington-based client once told her, “I don’t want my house to talk to me. I want it to leave me alone unless something’s wrong.” That statement lives rent-free in Syrelia’s mind, defining much of what she does. Quiet design. Responsive functionality. Less tech-as-art, more tech-as-support. Homes shouldn’t yell for your attention. They should just… know things. That’s her north star.
The Workday Still Starts at 9
Even visionary radicals have hours—Decorad Tech operates Monday–Friday: 9 AM–5 PM. Chances are if you’re quirky, blunt, a little skeptical of glossy rollout campaigns, you’ll like her. Just don’t be surprised when she turns down a project full of neon lights labeled “futuristic.” Her office on Zappia Drive isn’t a showroom. It’s a lab, a sketchpad, a staging ground for homes that think without bragging.
You won’t find a chatbot on her site cloying with, “Hi! How can I help you today?” But you can reach the team via [email protected], assuming your question isn’t about gifting your in-laws a smart towel rack. (And yes, that’s a request she received—and rejected.)
Still Here. Still Building.
Decorad Tech isn’t scaling to Vegas conferences. It’s not feeding into design expos where “AI Integration” gets used to describe nothing more than a timed kettle. Syrelia prefers Lexington’s slower pace, where she can walk into a house, smell its problems—too damp, too hot, too full of ambient inefficiency—and silently start fixing.
No signs. No slogans. Just connected systems, calmly working. If that doesn’t feel revolutionary to you, she’d argue that’s exactly the point.