Lighting. It’s great. It lets you use your eyes, read cereal packets, and hunt for lost pennies. But, even better, it’s totes easy to automate. Which is why a smart light bulb is the first thing any neophyte home automator reaches for.

But despite the inherent snazzy socks potential, lighting turned out to be the most aggravating aspect of renovating my apartment.

Of course, I intend to follow my my own home automation principles, building a smart apartment up via progressive enhancement. But there are so many choices out there for smart lighting that I almost chucked in the principles before I began.

If you read about smart lighting in a from-scratch-everything-new home you’ll get immediately dragged into the world of Building Management Systems and adjacent tech. You obviously need to understand the DALI lighting protocol! KNX is the only and best way of controlling lighting! Lutron is simply incredible for turning your lights on and off! (Especially so in Germany, where they have an absolute boner for huge automation cabinets done exactly right).

If you’re not a home automation nerd then it might make sense to go this route. You’ll find qualified installers who know their particular system works, and they can easily install it in exchange for cash.

These systems often eschew the “normal” lighting wiring found in homes and instead run everything from a central control panel, tied into PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers). This means either that per-room lighting (AC or DC) is driven by relays in the Main Consumer Unit, controlled by touch panels on each wall, and mediated by a PLC.

This is all very cool, but you’re reliant on that system for lighting control from then on. PLCs and associated complexities broken? You’re sitting in the dark until a Qualified Expensive Trades Person comes over to fix it. Want to mess around with it yourself? Well, you’re entering a world of trade secrets, meddlingly overcomplicated solutions and, well, being a bit German. (Sorry Germans - Ich lebe gerne in Deutschland. Ja, ehrlich.)

Nah, I don’t want that. It gives off bad vibes, and screams of pouring money into someone else’s toilet (rather than my own. (No I don’t know what I mean)).

But what about this “centralised” method, only with open protocols and software? Well, I have to admit that was tempting. I could easily purchase a bunch of DIN-mountable drivers from companies such as Shelly, and use them to drive the lighting. Basic control of the lighting would have been difficult to do without tying the wall switches back to a central panel. But it could have been overcome with some wiring magic.

However at that point I’m bending over backwards to replicate a commercial system and making things much more complicated for myself. Besides, anything I build needs to be maintainable in the future. I can’t go building a custom lighting setup that no one can maintain because I’ve gone on a bespoke rampage. Imagine I’m ill or away, and something needs modifying? If I want to sell the place I would have to make it clear that this is a custom setup and good luck to the buyer figuring it out - there’s no one out there to maintain it!

Stick to your principles, gal!

No, if I’m following my principles then I need to start “normally”, and work up from there.

A typical room in my region has a main overhead light, connected to a simple mechanical switch at the entrance to the room. All that’s necessary for that to work is delicious electricity, generated only milliseconds ago in your local power plant. Flip the switch and the light illuminates. This is my starting point for each room.

Me no smart

But how to make this basic setup smart? I hear about Smart bulbs, smart switches, or smart relays. What to choose?

Well, I’ve got some experience to draw on. Given that I can’t (and have never wanted to) redo the wiring in my current rental place I’ve had a couple of years of using smart bulbs as the main lighting for each room.

I’ve got very few actual complaints about them - they work and they’re responsive.

But honestly I found myself using very little of the “smart” aspects of them. Yes, I can adjust the white temperature of them, but I never do. This is northern Europe, and warm white works in the evenings - I never need to change it. On some I can change the colour of them - but I haven’t found a use for that in the years I’ve had them. Perhaps there is a reason why I’d need green overhead lighting, but if so I haven’t yet encountered it.

So I really just use the “smart” aspects to control the brightness of overhead bulbs. Please don’t tell my partner this because those light bulbs were stupid expensive. Which is itself a data point for the negative column.

But there’s a more fundamental issue with using smart bulbs as the main lighting source.

If you install smart bulbs then you’re immediately flipped into some Home Automation Mode. You end up taping up wall switches because if you don’t awful normal people will come along and dare to use the wall switches as they expect to use them. The audacity! How are you going to turn the lights on and off from your sofa if your significant other has removed their power source?

Confession time here: I’m guilty of taping up light switches. I hate myself for it. Never again.

So with all of that I feel that I can discount smart bulbs for overhead lighting. Normal dimmable bulbs of a fixed warm white temperature will be fine for me.

Relays vs Switches

So if I’m using normal bulbs then how do I plan to make the overhead lighting smart? Well, let me introduce you to smart switches and smart relays.

A smart relay is a tiny device that is inserted in between your Consumer Unit (breaker board if you’re a USA goblin) and your light bulb. Using magical radio waves you can use the relay to turn the power on or off, or anywhere in-between (if you’re into dimmable lights). It’s basically a normal electrical relay attached to a remote control.

Tap on your phone. Lights on. Tap again. Lights off. Neat.

If it’s a fancy relay then you can wire it up to a mechanical switch to the relay and use that in addition to the radio waves.

Wow, suddenly it works like a basic light circuit, but now you have the zippidy zappidy luxury of also controlling it remotely. Wow!

I mentioned smart switches, didn’t I? Well, tbh, they’re the same as the smart relays. It’s just that the smart switch comes with a built in mechanical switch. That’s it, really.

The advantage of smart switches is that they’re generally easier to install, as there’s no intermediate wiring.

So why not go for smart switches everywhere? Ah well, this is where smart switches lose out - I want to have a consistent, nice theme for all the electrical accessories in the apartment, and smart switches just can’t supply that. They all come with their own “look” that, yes, for some of them isn’t too bad. Unfortunately the vast majority look like they were made by someone who had their sense of taste surgically excised at birth.

But even the nicer looking ones still won’t harmonise with my choice in decor, and no-one is yet selling smart switches with changeable faceplates (genuinely an omission there).

So I guess that means smart relays for me. Hurrah!

Planning for relays

The downside of using these relays is that they need some planning to install successfully. Why? Well, because they’re normally hidden away, where prying fingers can’t get to them - and that normally means behind the wall switch.

I’m in a solid brick apartment - none of this North American hollow wall nonsense. Putting relays behind a wall switch is certainly possible, but honestly, just appallingly difficult. The sockets are often no deep enough, and even if they are, the brick tends to block radio signals - 2.4GHz WiFi and Zigbee frequencies don’t travel well through brick.

But [taps head] I don’t have to put the relays behind the wall sockets themselves. No, no, no. During the apartment renovation I’ve replaced all the electrical cabling and all the ceilings. While this is a regrettable amount of work for my back, it means that I’ve opened up some opportunities for placing these relays elsewhere. After all, they just need to be on the same electrical circuit - they don’t have to be physically near the switch. In fact the PLC relays I mentioned earlier are designed to be placed at the other end of the circuit.

So, crafty little bean that I am, I’ve opted to build in a junction box above each wall switch, in the ceiling itself.

By doing this I can have the relay sitting directly between the consumer unit and the light fitting, with the existing wiring to the mechanical switch now acting as an on/off toggle for the relay itself.

I’m pretty happy with this solution. Depending on how the junction box is wired, it can be used with a smart relay, or it can be returned to acting as a normal light circuit.

The only downside is when it comes to dimmable bulbs. Now, I’ll be using smart relays that also act as dimmers - that’s not a problem. The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be any solution that allows a smart relay to be dimmed by a mechanical switch. It’s either on, or it’s off.

That shouldn’t be a problem though. Most dimming is done automatically, depending on the time of day, or the Home Assistant scene. The on/off action is the main thing that I want, for visitors and guests. If we need manual dimming to be available then I can place a two-way battery operated switch next to the wall switch - I might even just lay some wiring next to it, in case I want to add a hard-wired rotary encoder…

Non-overhead lighting

Everything I’ve been talking about up until now has been the main overhead lighting for each room. That’s for good reason - because it’s the lighting that needs to be planned and hardwired in.

But that’s not the only source of light, and in fact it’s part of a wider layered set of lighting.

You see, there’s three types of lighting for a room - and apologies here my technical darlings, we’re going to discuss aesthetics here: Ambient lighting, task lighting, and accent lighting.

• Ambient is the main “glow” of a room. It creates the warmth that you live in.
• Task lighting is there when you need to do a job - cooking or cleaning.
• Accent lighting is there to show off certain items or areas of a room.

Together they make a room look lived in, rather than looking like an office.

In my little Northern European part of the world - where most of us live in quite small, relatively dark room - the overhead lighting is used as combination of ambience and tasks. Turn it down for ambience, turn it up for tasks.

But we need more than that. That’s where we bring in lamps and wall-mounted lighting.

Unlike in the overheads, lamps are very definitely where I do want to be using smart bulbs. Lamps are flexible. They’re moved around according to taste. They’re ambient lighting at its best. But they’re generally only extensible by changing the bulb - you can’t do much else with them. So, let’s give them a bulb that can do everything.

With a smart bulb lamps can work in any of the lighting groups. They can contribute to the ambient lighting, they can be used for specific tasks, and they can be used to accent certain areas. Lamps are the ultimate triple threat.

LEDs

“Charlie,” you might be screaming “why haven’t you installed ceiling LEDs and edge lighting and other exciting things??”

Because I have taste, my darling.

LEDs everywhere make it look as if a room is inhabited by a teenage boy who uses too much Lynx body spray. This is not what I want in a home. I like warm, subdued lighting. I don’t want to feel like I’m inside a gaming PC.

But LEDs have their place. I’m going to be installing DC-powered LEDs in certain strategic locations. They’re perfect for dedicated accent lighting, such as under kitchen cupboards, or in recessed shelving areas.

Some of these accents will no doubt be handled by LED strips plugged into a socket via a AC/DC power supply and controller. Those things will be pretty adhoc and I won’t know what will exist until we move in to the apartment.

But some LEDs I can anticipate, and make dedicated arrangements for. One of those is in the bathroom, which I am working on right now. There I know I’ll have accent lighting in shower niches, and around mirrors. Most of the time they will be an appropriate white, but I can see them being used for the nighttime, when you don’t want to blind yourself with white light. They can be set to an eyeball-friendly red to guide old people like myself around.

So I’ve run dedicated 6-core cabling to those areas, all originating from the central utility cupboard. I’ll connect those up to some kind of Zigbee RGBCCT controller - no idea what exactly yet, but that’s a problem for another time.

Follow the light

All in all I think I’ve made some good choices for lighting. I’m looking forward to showing it all off in good time. Hey, maybe I’ll actually have electricity to run them off within the next month or two…