Smart Lighting in Large Homes: Everything You Need to Know

Kitting out a big property with smart lighting? There are important factors to consider, such as high costs, network range, and device limits.

If you've had the good fortune to settle in a large property, upgrading to smart lighting is a great option to help manage your household's energy usage. Smart lights automate lighting wherever needed: an entire room, your bedside lamp, or a stairwell. Crucially, they also automate the off switch, saving money on your energy bills.

However, configuration in a bigger home can get pretty complicated, and larger indoor spaces will require significant planning.

Whether you’re looking to kit out a country retreat, your dream retirement estate, or another unconventional large property, this guide has all the important considerations for a successful smart lighting installation.

Smart lighting is convenient and even better if you've got more than half of a dozen rooms, each with several lights and lamp fixtures to worry about.

​Gone shopping but forgotten the conservatory light? A command to your smartphone saves the day and avoids squandering electricity. Finished reading for the evening? Set a timer to dim the bedside lamp as you're drifting to sleep.

According to the Energy Information Administration, the average US residential customer used 10,632 kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2021. Apply a three or four-fold multiplier for the additional rooms, and you're easily looking at a $4,000+ annual spend. While light bulbs aren't the most energy-intensive appliance, every little helps.

Beyond the energy savings, smart lights are fun to use. Many products have color schemes that can be altered with a touch of a button or automated with a smart home assistant.

In a massive property, selecting a unified controller to operate many smart lights is a challenge. If you want to cover every lighting fixture throughout the house, then you'll want to figure out the most cost-efficient method. There are also technical barriers specific to smart lighting in large properties.

One of the first considerations is the cost of adding smart functionality to every light bulb in your property.

Some smart lights use a bespoke bridge device to control light bulbs with embedded wireless connectivity. Others connect directly to your wireless router. In both cases, you'll need to account for the price of purchasing enough smart light bulbs and bridges.

For example, Philips Hue is one of the most ubiquitous smart light controllers. A standard Philips Hue light bulb will cost $20 or so per fitting, on top of $50 to 70 for the bridge. These costs accumulate quickly if you have hundreds of lights to install. Plus, each smart light bulb will need replaced when it burns out.

While there are common Philips Hue problems to watch out for, it's still an excellent smart lighting ecosystem and there are many reasons to get excited about Philips Hue.

The bridge devices which connect Philips Hue smart lights often have a maximum capacity for light bulbs. It's important to consider whether the capacity will be sufficient. Hue's bridge device has a capacity of 50 light bulbs. If that isn't enough, you could purchase two Philips Hue bridge units to connect as many as 100 light bulbs.

You'd then need to use the software app to switch between the two bridges, each controlling a separate set of light bulbs.

Depending on the size of the property, you'll also want to check the range of your smart lights. For example, most of Philips Hue's competitors use Wi-Fi rather than a bridge, but this won't work well in situations where the lighting is far from the main Wi-Fi access point in your house.

Manufacturers of Wi-Fi light bulbs include Wyze, LIFX, and Govee. Avoiding them is probably your best bet in a larger property, especially if you rely on Wi-Fi extenders to cover sections of the house. If you do choose Wi-Fi, try to make sure the light bulbs are compatible with 5GHz communication channels, as most modern Wi-Fi routers default to 5GHz; not checking this is a common smart home mistake.

Your best option is probably smart lighting brands that use bespoke radio frequencies designed for smart homes. For example, Hue light bulbs can use a low-power frequency standard known as Zigbee mesh networking. Due to the low power profile of Zigbee radio waves, the range drops to 10 - 30 meters while operating indoors. However, the mesh protocol means Hue light bulbs connect to each other, forming a relay with the central bridge device.

Bluetooth is another alternative to Wi-Fi that connects to your phone or another Bluetooth-enabled smart home input. However, it wouldn't be accessible from external networks, meaning you can't use it from outside the house. You can remedy this by purchasing a Bluetooth internet hub to connect the lights to the internet, or a Hue bridge to connect Bluetooth-operated Hue light bulbs.

If you already have smart home devices in your large household, it's best to check compatibility with smart lighting brands. There are several standards in the marketplace that ensure interoperability between smart devices.

If you have a voice assistant like Siri HomeKit or Alexa, it's worth checking your chosen brand is compatible. Smart lighting support for HomeKit, in particular, is sometimes lacking. Other standards include Samsung SmartThings if you have a Samsung TV or smartphone.

If you can't ensure compatibility with your smart home's protocols, then it becomes less straightforward to integrate the smart lights into your existing smart home setup. One emerging alternative is the interoperability standard Matter, which is designed to smooth communications across several smart home ecosystems. Apple Home supports Matter, for instance, which should make it easier to connect new Matter smart lighting peripherals.

It might be worth exploring a custom-made smart lighting system if you want to avoid the pitfalls described above.

Vendors manufacture smart lighting switches for professional installation, integrating with your household's lighting circuits. For example, a smart dimmer from Lightwave lets you use any light bulb that's appropriate.

This might be a cheaper alternative in the long term as it would let you use ordinary light bulbs, while still providing the same smart, connected functionality throughout your large property.

The savings become larger if you own unusual lighting fixtures, like tube lights or floor lighting, due to the extra cost in smart lighting ecosystems. For example, a standard tube light should cost around $10-20, but you'll pay around $200 for one that works with Philips Hue's bridge.

That said, while you do save money, you lose some fun functionality, since light switches offer fewer options for changing light colors and intensity. You could always purchase a colorful smart light in addition to the switches, and then weave them into the same network using an interoperability standard like Matter.

In terms of the light switches themselves, you have a plenty of vendors to choose from.

Z-Wave smart switches are an excellent choice—the customer feedback is overwhelmingly positive. Like Zigbee, Z-Wave is a mesh network protocol that uses low-energy radio waves for communication. Several vendors offer light switches based on the Z-Wave networking standard. Check for smart switches from Aeotec, Enerwave, and others.

Aside from Z-Wave, there's also the lighting control manufacturer Lutron. It provides smart lighting solutions for high-end residential properties and commercial buildings, supporting thousands of devices in some cases. Lutron's light dimmer control platform Caséta even supports connectivity to platforms including Philips Hue, Samsung SmartThings and Wemo.

Smart light installations are a fantastic way to manage energy usage in massive properties. If you have capacity to install new light switches, this is likely the most effective installation path, as it streamlines connectivity issues. But there are plenty of advantages to smart light bulbs too, particularly in terms of customization.

Once you get going, you'll probably want to get an energy calculator to quantify gains for the environment and your wallet. With some benchmarks pegging the typical cash return at 30%, it's definitely worth tracking how you get on.