The most daunting aspects of starting on a smart home project are, what do I want to achieve with it, what do I look at first and how much will it cost?

This page is a starting point to answer all those questions. By looking at the products we use and have tested in the real world, we hope that it will give you some ideas of what is achievable with a smart home.

Once you know what can be achieved with smart home technology you can then start designing and prioritising tasks that you wish to pick up. By breaking down the creation of your smart home into areas and projects to tackle one at a time it makes integration easier and also makes accepting using the new solutions easier for everyone in your household.

No one likes changes to how normal, everyday devices work. The number one rule with any smart home project should be to maintain the current function while adding smart features. For example, if you install smart light bulbs into a room of your house and then remove the light switch so that the bulbs are always powered and can be controlled from your smartphone, you will soon find this is not a good change. It is more convenient to operate on a light switch as you walk into a room than it is to get your phone out of your pocket, launch an app, find your light switch and turn it on. This is also not intuitive for guests that are unaware of your smart home tech. An alternative to this is to use smart light switches instead. These function like a normal light switch but can also be controlled via the vendor’s app on your smartphone, or via Alexa or even via integrations with link sites such as IFTTT. You can read more about this on the integrations page. This solution adds functionality on top of the existing solution rather than replacing it, making it simpler for all of the entire household to adapt.

Check out the links below for some of our favorite vendors and products to get you started.