Cable in an open wall is cheap. The same cable in a finished wall costs several times as much and involves patching. So the most expensive decision in a smart home is not which platform you choose — it is which runs you skip while the walls are open.
The neutral problem, first
Smart switches draw a small standby current to keep their radio and processor alive, and that current needs a return path — the neutral. Many older Connecticut homes use switch loops that bring only the hot conductor to the switch box. Install a smart dimmer there and you get erratic behaviour or a lamp that glows faintly when off.
If your walls are open, run a neutral to every switch box, whether or not you plan a smart switch there today. It is a trivial addition during rough-in and a wall-opening exercise afterwards. This is the single most common regret we hear.
Room by room
Every switch box
- Neutral conductor, without exception
- Consider a deeper box — smart devices are bulkier than a toggle switch
Office and media rooms
- Two Cat6 runs, not one — one always ends up serving something you did not anticipate
- Power behind the display position, not just below it
Hallways and ceilings
- Cat6 to the access point positions, ideally ceiling-mounted and central
- Hardwired interconnected smoke and CO detector loop
Entry points
- Doorbell wiring plus an adequately rated transformer — many video doorbells need more than the old chime transformer supplies
- Camera power and data at each covered approach
Windows and shades
- Power at the head of any window you might motorise later
- Neutral at the associated switch position
Panel
- Whole-house surge protective device
- Spare capacity and free breaker spaces for the EV charger or heat pump you have not bought yet
- A 240V run to the garage even if the car is petrol today
Wire the important things, wireless the convenient ones
The most reliable smart homes are the ones where anything load-bearing is wired and only conveniences are wireless. Cameras, doorbells, access points and anything you would be annoyed to reboot should be on cable and mains power. Battery sensors and remote buttons are fine wireless — you will not care if one needs a battery in spring.
Renovating or rewiring is the moment for all of this. See smart home wiring and whole house rewiring for how we build a room-by-room cabling plan.
Surge protection before gadgets
A plug-in strip protects what is plugged into it. It does nothing for your furnace control board, heat pump inverter, oven electronics, garage door opener or the LED drivers in the lighting you just paid for. A whole-house device at the panel is a one to two hour install that sits in front of all of it. If you are spending on smart lighting or a heat pump, this is the first line item, not an afterthought.
Choosing a platform without locking yourself in
Ecosystems change, get discontinued and get acquired. The way to protect yourself is to keep the wiring generic and the intelligence replaceable. Standard cable, standard back boxes, neutral present everywhere, and a central location with power and network where a hub can live — all of that outlives whichever app is fashionable when you build.
Where you can, prefer devices that continue to work as ordinary switches when the network is down or the manufacturer's service disappears. A smart switch that becomes a dumb switch during an outage is an inconvenience. One that becomes a blank plate is a call to an electrician.
The runs people regret skipping
- A neutral at every switch box — the single most common regret, and trivial to add during rough-in
- A 240V circuit to the garage, even with a petrol car today
- Cat6 to ceiling access point positions rather than relying on mesh through plaster
- Conduit from the basement or attic to the loft or roof space, so future runs need no wall opening
- Power at window heads for shades you have not bought yet
- A spare pair of circuits to the panel from anywhere you might finish later — basement, attic, garage
Do the boring infrastructure first
There is a consistent order that produces homes people are happy with. Panel capacity and spare breaker spaces first, because everything else terminates there. Then surge protection, because it protects everything you are about to install. Then structured cabling and neutrals, because they are what make devices reliable. Then hardwired safety systems — interconnected smoke and CO detection. Only then the devices themselves.
Homes done in the reverse order — gadgets first, infrastructure never — are the ones where somebody is resetting a hub every fortnight and blaming the brand. The brand is usually not the problem.