MUI Lab’s wood controller goes viral
A smart‑home controller from MUI Lab that pairs maple and cherry wood with an LED matrix interface has gone viral, appearing in multiple posts and drawing thousands of views as an example of tech that foregrounds natural materials. The device blends tactile wood finishes with on‑device UI and has been shared across social posts that emphasize the 'smart wood' aesthetic ( ).
A wooden smart-home controller from Kyoto startup mui Lab is spreading across social posts this month, turning a niche home-automation product into a design talking point. (muiboard.com; muilab.com) The device is sold as the mui Board Gen 2, a wall-mounted controller made from real wood with a display that appears through the surface only when needed. mui Lab says it can control lights, thermostats and smart locks through Matter, the cross-brand smart-home standard backed by Apple, Google, Amazon and others. (muiboard.com; muilab.com) mui Lab says the current consumer version is available for international shipping and lists a price of $999. The store page says orders ship within 14 days. (muiboard.com) The company has been pushing the product beyond gadget circles and into interior design and housing. In 2025, mui Board won a Good Design Award, and in December 2025 mui Lab said the product would be integrated with Mitsubishi Estate’s HOMETACT service in new housing developments. (muilab.com; muilab.com) The idea behind the product is simple: hide the screen until it is needed. mui Lab describes the system as a patented wood display panel that shows information on the wood surface when the device is on and disappears when it is off. (muilab.com) That pitch has been central to the company since its start. Nissha said when it established mui Lab on October 27, 2017, the new company would develop and sell a wooden interface product for the internet-of-things market. (nissha.com) mui Lab has tied the product to what it calls “Calm Technology,” a design approach that tries to push computing into the background instead of demanding constant attention. The company’s mui operating system was named a 2025 Consumer Electronics Show Innovation Awards honoree in the smart-home category. (muilab.com; ces.tech) The board is also moving into more standardized smart-home systems. mui Lab said in July 2023 that its platform had secured Matter certification, which it described as a first in Japan for a smart-home controller, and the company has kept adding Matter-related features through 2026. (muilab.com; muilab.com) The recent burst of attention does not change the product’s basic pitch: a smart-home panel that looks like furniture first and electronics second. That is the same formula mui Lab has been refining since its first wood interface products, and it is now the part of the device that people keep reposting. (muilab.com; muiboard.com)
