Smart lighting installation - buy the bulbs yourself

What is smart lighting installation?

Most smart lighting needs no installer at all. If the plan is screw-in bulbs in existing lamps and fixtures, buy them from a retailer, fit them yourself in an afternoon and keep the labour. Hiring becomes worthwhile at three points: hardwired fixtures that replace what is on the ceiling, anything that involves opening the switch box, and low-voltage lighting run outside across a garden.

Signs you need smart lighting installation

• You want the lighting itself to change - new fixtures, recessed downlights, cove or under-cabinet runs - rather than just the bulbs in what is already there
• The lights you want to control are on a wall switch other people will keep flipping off, which makes bulbs the wrong answer
• You have opened the switch box and found no white wire bundle, which stops most smart switches before they start
• You want the outside of the house lit - path, driveway, trees, façade - and there is currently no power out there
• Bulbs in enclosed or recessed fittings keep failing early or behaving oddly, which is usually a heat problem rather than a brand problem

Seeing something not on this list? Browse smart home problems by symptom →

How smart lighting installation actually works

1. 1

   Deciding bulb, fixture or switch - the only decision that matters

   Smart bulbs are cheap, reversible and self-installed, but they only work when the wall switch stays on. Smart switches control everything downstream of them and behave normally for guests, but need the right wiring. Smart fixtures put the intelligence in the light itself. Most houses end up mixing all three, deliberately.

   Watch forSmart bulbs behind a switch that people actually use. Every time someone flips it, the bulb loses power and drops off the network, and the household concludes that smart lighting does not work.

2. 2

   Opening the switch box before promising anything

   What is in the box decides the options. A neutral bundle, the number of conductors, whether the box has room for a device with a body on it, and whether the switch is one of a pair controlling the same light are all established in the first ten minutes.

   Watch forA fixed price quoted before any box is opened. In older housing stock the wiring found behind the plate changes the job more often than not.

3. 3

   Fitting hardwired fixtures

   Replacing a ceiling fixture, fitting recessed downlights or running linear under-cabinet lighting is ordinary electrical work with a smart driver on the end. Ceiling access, insulation contact ratings on recessed cans, and where the driver or transformer physically lives are the practical constraints.

   Watch forRecessed fittings buried in insulation without an IC rating. It is a fire risk and it also cooks the electronics, which is why those fixtures fail years before their rated life.

4. 4

   Getting power outside for low-voltage lighting

   Exterior and landscape lighting typically runs at low voltage from a transformer, which needs a weather-rated outdoor supply to feed it. Cable is buried along the runs, fittings are spiked or fixed, and the transformer is sized for the total load plus headroom for the fittings you will add later.

   Watch forA transformer sized exactly to today's fixtures. Long runs also drop voltage, so the far end of a garden run dims noticeably - spotting that at design time is much cheaper than digging the cable up.

5. 5

   Commissioning, grouping and naming

   Fittings get joined, grouped by room and scene, and named in a way the rest of the household will recognise. Scenes worth having are few: bright, low, and off. Everything beyond that tends to be configured once and never used.

   Watch forDozens of scenes and no plain "all lights on". The failure mode of smart lighting is not that it breaks, it is that guests and family cannot turn a light on.

What does smart lighting installation cost?

Bulbs are a retail spend with no labour attached. Swapping a switch or a fixture is short, priced labour. Adding fixtures where none exist, or running low-voltage lighting across a garden with a new outdoor supply, is a day or more of work. See the Cost Guide.

See the full smart lighting installation cost guide - by material, size and region →

If the number is the problem, here are the ways people pay for it →