Straight answers

Most of what puts people off a smart home isn't true.

You don't need to rewire. You almost certainly don't need a neutral wire. It keeps working when your broadband doesn't. And you can start with one room for less than most people spend on a sofa.

Lights, sockets, heating, blinds, and everything else on a circuit. Here are the fifteen things we get asked most, answered properly.

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Do you need an electrician to fit a smart light switch?

Not for a straightforward swap in your own home. It wires the same way as any switch, into the same back box.

A lot of the pages telling you to book a professional are written by people who'd like to be the professional you book.

In England and Wales, replacing a light switch like for like in your own home isn't notifiable work under Part P of the Building Regulations. (Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own rules.) There's one firm exception: anything in a bathroom or shower room should go to a registered electrician.

Everywhere else it's the same job as fitting any new switch plate. Isolate at the consumer unit, prove the circuit is dead with a voltage indicator, note which wire goes where, connect, screw back. No special cable, no data cable, no commissioning visit, nobody to call back every time you want to change something.

Is Lightwave suitable for a new build or self build?

Very much so. More than half our customers come to Lightwave during a new build or a major renovation, and it's one of the few decisions on a build you don't have to make early.

There's a persistent belief that a smart home has to be designed in at the start, alongside the drainage and the heating. With a centralised system that's true, and it's a genuine burden: a control specification at first fix, dedicated cable through the whole building, a rack location agreed months before anyone has chosen a light fitting.

Lightwave uses the standard UK wiring your electrician is already installing. No control cable, no bus, no distribution board to design around, and no room to give up to a server rack. Your electrician wires the property exactly as they normally would, first fix and second fix, and the smart layer goes on afterwards.

Which means, in practice, you get to ignore it for a while. A build has a hundred decisions in it that genuinely cannot be deferred. This isn't one of them, and that's worth something when everything else is competing for your attention and your contingency.

Can you use a smart switch on a two way light?

Yes. Two way, three way, intermediate, however many control points you want. There's no limit, and you can add more anywhere you like with no wiring at all.

The landing light is the scenario we get asked about most, and there's a stubborn belief that smart switches can't handle it.

They can. One rule: every control point on that circuit needs to be a Lightwave switch. You can't leave one as a conventional switch, because a conventional switch cuts the power the smart one needs. One is the master, the others follow. We'll set that up with you on the phone if you'd like. It's a five minute call.

Here's the part people don't expect. Because the switches talk over radio rather than through the wiring, you can put a control point where there's no cable at all, and you can have as many as you want. Our wire free switches are battery powered, stick to the wall, and last two to three years on a battery.

Want to control the landing light from the bottom of the stairs, where there's never been a switch? That's a five minute job and no plasterwork. People use them by the bed, outside a bedroom door, at the top of a loft ladder, or as a one press "everything off" by the front door.

Do you need a hub, and how far does it actually reach?

One hub covers the whole property. Lightwave devices communicate using specially designed radio antennas, capable of pushing signals up to 1000m outdoors and 100m indoors.

People hear "hub" and think extra cost and another thing to break. Here's what you actually get for it.

Your devices don't each need a wifi connection, an IP address and a slice of your bandwidth. They talk on a dedicated radio network built for the job, through antennas designed specifically for it. That combination is what gives the range: seamless control across even the most expansive spaces, which makes it suited to large properties and outdoor installations alike. Outbuildings, garages, garden lighting, gates and annexes all sit comfortably within reach of a single hub.

Why the numbers you read elsewhere are hard to compare

It's worth knowing that this industry quotes "range" in three completely different ways, and rather hopes you won't notice.

• Hub to device, in one hop. The distance from the hub to the thing you're controlling, directly, with nothing in between. That's how we quote ours.
• Node to node, per hop. A mesh figure. It describes the gap between two neighbouring devices, not the reach of the system. Total coverage then depends on owning enough mains powered devices and them happening to sit in the right places.
• Cable length. Occasionally a headline figure turns out to be how far you can run a cable to a remote aerial, which isn't radio range at all.

There's a second, less obvious consequence. On a mesh, a command may be handed along through several devices before it arrives, and every hop adds delay. Ours goes straight from the hub to the device, so there's none of the lag a mesh accumulates while relaying a signal across a property. You notice it most where it matters: a whole floor going off at once, or a scene firing across several rooms together rather than raggedly.

Is Lightwave just smart lighting?

No. Lighting is where people often start, though not always, and it's a fraction of what the system does.

The same hub and the same app run smart dimmers and switches, smart sockets with energy monitoring built in, wire free battery switches you can put anywhere, relays, sensors and heating control, all together, with automations that cross between them rather than sitting in three apps that ignore each other.

The relays are the part people underestimate. If something runs on a circuit, a relay behind the fitting will almost certainly control it: blind and curtain motors, extractor and ceiling fans, garden and facade lighting, LED strip, pumps, gate and garage lighting, towel rails, water features. In practice it's very rare that we're shown something and have to say no.

That's usually the moment a project changes shape. People come to us about a lounge full of downlights and leave having worked out that the outside lights, the sockets behind the television and the heating in the extension can all sit on the same system, on one app, controlled from the same switch by the front door.

Will I be locked into one brand?

No. Lightwave works with all the major voice and integration platforms, which means it works with an enormous amount of what you already own, or might buy next.

It's a fair worry. Plenty of people have been burned by a smart home brand that only talked to itself, and then stopped talking at all.

The practical effect of those integrations is that you stop having to think about brands at all. Something happens on one manufacturer's device, and your Lightwave devices respond. Two examples of the sort of thing customers actually set up, with roughly how long each takes:

The same pattern works with an intruder alarm, or an external PIR: something detects, and your lights, sockets and blinds respond however you want them to. None of it requires the alarm and the lighting to be the same brand, which is rather the point. You shouldn't have to limit what you buy next to whatever your first purchase happened to be.

The other half of the answer matters more, and almost nobody asks it: what happens if you stop using the app altogether? Every switch on your wall carries on working as a switch. The automations already saved on your hub carry on running. Unlike a system where the intelligence lives in a cloud account, the thing screwed to your wall is a functioning light switch first and a smart device second. You're never one server away from a dark hallway.

Smart light switch or smart bulb?

Smart bulbs are a genuinely good way to try this. Buy one, live with it for a month, and you'll know whether a smart home is for you. Most people who enjoy it end up at switches.

We're not going to talk you out of a smart bulb. They're inexpensive, they take thirty seconds, they do colour properly, and for a rented flat or a single bedside lamp they're the sensible answer. Plenty of our customers started exactly there.

What tends to move people towards switches is living with bulbs for a while and noticing three things.

• The wall switch becomes a hazard. Turn it off and the bulb is dead to the app, so the household learns not to touch it. Guests, children and cleaners never get that memo.
• You replace the smart part every time a bulb goes. The intelligence is in the consumable, which is an odd place to put it.
• The maths turns on you in a room with several lamps. Six downlights means six smart bulbs. One dimmer does the same room whatever is in the ceiling, and keeps the fittings you already chose.

That's the whole argument, and it only really applies once you know you want this. If you're still deciding, buy a bulb.

Can you take it with you when you move?

You're not locked in either direction. Hand it over to the buyers or take the hub and go, and we'll do it with you on the phone.

We get this from both ends: sellers who want to leave something that works, and buyers who've inherited a house full of Lightwave and can't get into it.

• Selling? We transfer ownership to the new owner's account with their settings and automations intact. One call.
• Just moved in? If the previous owner has gone, we can still release the devices to you. You don't need anything from them.
• Taking it with you? Switches unscrew like any switch plate. Put the originals back, take yours, and your automations restore onto the hub at the new place.

One thing worth doing at the point of sale: in England and Wales fitted switches are treated as fixtures and assumed to be included, so if you intend to take them, mark them as excluded on the TA10 form rather than raising it on completion day.