That looks really interesting, never heard of Tasmota. I'll look into it thank you so much!

1. Use IKEA Tradfri bulbs and get a Zigbee coordinator stick that’ll work with HA (Sonoff Dongle-E ZigBee 3.0). Some of their bulbs are CRI 90+ which is great. They’ll also act as Zigbee bridges.
   If you can, add Shelly 1’s to all light switches so you have manual control over them (via HA).
   You can also just put shellies only and use normal light bulbs.
2. If you’re redoing the whole place (including windows), add standard electric covers and then use Shelly Plus 2PM which will allow you to set the precise position as well. It’ll be hidden in the wall behind the switch and allow manual control as you would if there wasn’t anything smart behind it.
3. Shelly 1PM if you need power measurement, but if you don’t want to fiddle with power sockets and mounting stuff behind them, you can also use any Zigbee/Z-Wave plugs.
4. HomePods could do the job if you’re in that ecosystem. Snapcast has matured so it might be a viable option as well, albeit less clean. If you wish to go the Sonos route, check IKEA’s sonos speakers as they’re cheaper and perform excellent.

Bonus: Spin up OpenWRT + managed switch + a dedicated AP if you want to have a killer network that can handle insane amount of devices and throughput. Also make sure to route Ethernet cables to every room (use CAT6A for future proofing) and add an additional one in the room you wish to put your WiFi AP in so you don’t have to use a switch there if you wish to have a Ethernet connected device in there as well. Depending on the apartment size, you can get 2 U6 Lite APs, flash them with OpenWRT and enable fast roaming or just get a U6 LR, but make sure you test the coverage thoroughly before drilling and installing. Either way, go with OpenWRT wherever you can, it’s an amazing piece of software.

Hola :)

I’m not sure how many boxes it ticks off for you, but I’ve been trying to get away from Tuya gear and a friend put me on to “Athom”. Most (all?) of their stuff seems to come pre-flashed with Tasmota and with what I’ve had, it integrates nicely with home assistant (mqtt + tasmota plugin, config the globe and you’re good to go).

I’ve just gotten two of their 15W led globes plus a WS2812 addressable LED controller a few weeks ago, and so far so good with all of the above.

From what I’ve seen I’m pretty sure they have plugs/sockets for a few different countries available, they have in-wall stuff, smart light switches, relays, and pretty sure they do some zigbee or similar as well.

I picked mine up from Ali Express but I’ve seen them on Amazon and they’re probably available on other places as well (eBay, etc).

Best of luck!

1. Get the sonoff and z2m and go zigbee wherever possible. It's worked very well for me, and the devices have to be local so no cloud bullshit. Z2M has a good page with supported devices listed, so you can check what works before you buy. I use mainly smart plugs and go on/off only but use bulbs where smarter control is needed. Plugs are mostly tuya from aliexpress for lights, with domesticly bought higher quality (aquara and hue) for higher demand loads. Bulbs are all Ikea, they are cheap and work well. You should literally never need a hub with zigbee, thought some devices might loose some features without the hub.
2. I have an ikea blind, the battery lasts a long time but there are guides online for hacking them to be wired. They do have some QC issues, i had to take min apart to fix a loose setscrew but it's worked perfectly after that. From what I've seen it's an assembly issue and not a design issue, so i would have no problem buying more.
3. How hard is it to replace the outlets? Here it's illegal to DIY so quite expensive, therefore I've gone all zigbee smart plugs. If you can DIY changing the outlets that is not an issue, and smart outlets may be a better option. I always try to think of what happens if something fails, some things can get very expensive at a later point. YMMV…

I'm not an expert, but if I look around, I see lots of DIYers who use ZigBee and things like that. But professionals use for example KNX. As far as I know KNX is all local, wired and so on; but a multitude more expensive. I guess there are other protocols.

So if money isn't an issue and I had a new home, I would research KNX first, and eventually add some ZigBee gear.

Also, go for the basics: smart heating, smart switches and smart outlets. That allows the best automations. Maybe add some wires to your doors for openclose detection, power for smart blinds and so on.

Why is Zigbee rated to be better than WiFi?

I'm a very much beginner on this and I'm just upgrading an old(ish, latest big remodel is from 90-91) house, so for me it's important to have an solution which can extend on the existing wiring. I have couple of HeatIt Z-DIM2 dimmers and couple switches from TechniSat (altough these are pretty much impossible to get from Finland which would be nice for warranty and such). The best part for me is that you'll still have the actual light switch, and on my case even the same rockers and covers from old ones, so you can either rely on automations with movement and light sensors and you still have the option to interact with lights by physically pushing buttons and turning knobs.

I also recently switched one of our floor heating thermostats to z-wave one (HeatIt Z-TRM3) with the same principle. It functions just the same than old one, so you can interact with it physically and then there's the option to run as complex automations as you wish on the background. Personally I don't like to rely only on (local) server and interface on my phone/tablet, since it's often more convenient just to push a switch on a wall than open my phone and find an app on it (but the option to control stuff via app is nice).

Z-Wave has european store (shop.zwave.eu) and I'm pretty happy doing business with them. Couple of B-stock (customer returns and things like that) got RMA'd but beyond that they've been pretty reliable and warranties seem to work. Zigbee is something I'm planning to add, but for me they're not a priority as there's a lot to do for optimizing electricity consumption with existing hardware.

For DIY side of things I have couple of ESP32 based chinese knockoffs I'm planning to use with DHT22 sensors and potentially some LED strips, but that's somewhere in the future. I also tinkered a bit with MySensors (mysensors.org) but NRF24L01+ transreceivers I got from ebay (dirt cheap, less than 1€ each) are apparently some counterfeits or factory rejects, as I didn't get them to work reliably at all even from one end of the desk to another. Specially from ebay the price point of those is really tempting to add a ton of sensors to the system, but in my experience cheaping out on these is just a waste of money. I'm not that experienced with electronics tho, so maybe someone more experienced can give a more educated answer on these.

For smart plugs I have two POPE700397 to plug in random things. I got them to control car engine/indoor heaters and for that they've been really nice. I just need to work with home assistant addons a bit to get the scedule management to work properly with a smart phone. The stock timer on HA is a pain in the rear to manage with a touch screen, with keyboard and mouse it works just fine, but I don't want to open a computer whenever I need to adjust times for those.