My whole home has been wired with smart lights and switches for the last 6 or so years now.
I use the voice commands sometimes, but here's a few highlights of why I've done it and what I like about it:
- I never turn lights off leaving the house, they're on a geofence so when the last phone has left home, all the lights turn off. No more going around the house to make sure you shut all your lights off, and no more wastefully leaving a bunch of lights on all day.
- When I get home, I never walk into a dark home or a dark room - the same geofence will turn on the coming home routine by the time we hit the front steps.
- Motion sensors - most of my single use areas (closets, bathrooms, pantry, kitchen task lights, etc.) are attached to motion sensors so there's no extra work to turn those lights on or off when you're going in or out of places, especially if you have your hands full. As soon as I swing the pantry door open, the lights come on, and they go off themselves when nobody's in there anymore.
- Multi-room routines and settings are really nice. Saying "it's move time", or "it's <my son's> bedtime" sets a bunch of things in motion.
- Lastly, just being able to use your app, even if you don't want to use your voice, to change a bunch of lights at once without having to get off the couch. I don't like getting off the couch when I don't want to get off the couch.
To answer the original question here, I've mostly done the Hue ecosystem which works great with both, and then just Hue remotes. In our new place I just went in on the Lutron Caseta system. We have a ton of Diva dimmers and a few Claro switches. I'm going to be setting a lot of it up in the coming weeks, with Google Home as the base, and will let you know how those go.
I accumulated them all on eBay over the course of a few months at a fairly steep discount against what they're sold for at Home Depot.
