Be Excellent To Each Other

I have been looking at smart light switches, as smart bulbs won't work in some of the fittings I have, plus I know I would turn the switch off by accident

There seems to be a vast selection of them, and I have not a clue where to start. They need to be both google and alexa complaint (if there is such a thing)

We have TP Link Tapo smart plugs that work very well. They do smart light switches too, but you need to have a smart hub for those.
The H100 is the cheap option but the H200 will be better if you plan on adding cameras in future.

I know that I’m being a dimwit here, but what is the benefit of a smart light switch if you have to go over and put the switch on anyway?

Chinese hackers can turn your lights on and off remotely.

So for most of these the switch is left permanently in the 'on' position and you control it in other ways the most obvious ones are :

Assisant "Alexa Kitchen lights on" or "Alexa Kitchen lights full"
From your phone or watch while sitting on the couch
On a timer (most also have settings for sunset so for example turn on the hallway lights at sundown or turn them to dim at midnight)

You can (or could) get 'fake' switches that sit over your wall ones that just work the app and we had one of those for the living room when we first got them so if you automatically just reach for the switch you hit it instead of the real one (which you'd need to turn twice to get the lights on).

We’ve got smart bulbs, it was just the smart switch bit that had confused me as I thought you’d be using the switch to switch them on anyway

Smart switches can save money over smart bulbs - for example, our kitchen has about ten bulbs in and our living room has twelve, but they only have three switches between them.

[sigh] Opens up amazon...

I do miss being able to tell the house i'm going to bed and it does "stuff" but with 8 bulbs in the living room I was priced out. Didn't consider the switch.

Yes I have a lot of bulbs in the kitchen..

Oh, yeah that makes total sense. Hadn’t even considered that.

Quite like being able to dim living room bulbs, though.

You can still do that with a smart switch.

However, @trooper will be along in a bit to tell you why it might not be the best idea...

Hi!

Yeah that didn't work so well.

Turns out, when you want to install smart light switches, you need your house to not be wired by a maniac
I'm pretty sure that some of the switches are wired upside down, but as all the wires are just random red and black, it difficult to tell for sure
I did manage to get it so that the left switch worked fine, and so did the right switch... but only if the left switch was on
but the cages are only a cm deep anyway, so even if I managed to get the smart switch to work, I'd have to fit all new boxes, which will involve some follow up decorating etc... and being as i'm in rented it doesn't seem worth the effort (plus i'm powerful lazy)

At least it's all old-fashioned black/red and not a random mix of black/red and blue/brown as well!

How many times did it try to burn your house down? Because our sockets and switches stand at about 50:50 of the ones I've touched (and on one memorable occasion, the one along from the one I touched).