Do you see videos of smart homes and think about how cool that would be to have in your home? Maybe you think automating your lights or turning them on and off with your phone would make some things in your life easier? Do you just not know how to get started? I’m here to help. In this article I will tell you how to start building your smart home in the easiest way possible.
When you are thinking about building a smart home there is one thing that you have to decide on right away. Do you want to use Google Assistant, Alexa (Amazon), Apple HomeKit or another brand of hub. To me the easiest, by far, is to choose either Google or Alexa. There are a ridiculous amount of products that work with both of these platforms. They also generally require nothing extra to make the smart home devices work. Hub systems do not work with as many different products and a lot of the time you have to setup the devices within the hub system settings. With Google Assistant and Alexa devices you usually just have to hook them up to your Wi-Fi and link them to an app on your phone.
Voice Assistants
For the rest of this article I am going to assume that you went with Google or Alexa. Now it is time to start adding devices. What devices should you add though? Well, the first thing that I would recommend is some sort of voice assistant. Depending on the phone that you have you might have a voice assistant on it already (Android has Google Assistant built-in for example). I wouldn’t recommend relying on your phone though. You definitely don’t want to always have your phone on you. Also sometimes when using your phone you have to unlock it first which is very inconvenient.
When it comes to voice assistants you have a ton of options. Google has the Nest mini and Nest audio which are speaker. They also have the Nest Hub and Nest Hub Max which are screens with speakers. Alexa has the Echo Dot and the Echo Studio which are speakers and they have different sizes of the Echo Show which are Amazon’s screen options. The easiest and cheapest are either the Nest Mini and the Echo Dot. Both of these are small speakers with the voice assistant built in. There are also other third party options like the Lenovo Smart Clock with Google Assistant or the Ecobee 4 Thermostat with Alexa built in.
Google Nest Mini 
Amazon Echo Dot
Other Recommended Smart Products
Now that you have a voice assistant you have a basic smart home. Now you can start adding more smart devices. My recommended first thing to add are some smart outlet adapters. With these you just plug them in to a wall outlet and plug something into them. All that these devices do is give you the ability to turn them on or off with your voice. You can also manually trigger them with your phone or smart display.
This makes them perfect to use with things like lamps. You plug your lamp into the smart outlet adapter and you can turn it on or off with voice commands. You can also set up routines so you can trigger one command and it can turn off a group of outlets at the same time. This really comes in handy at night when you are going to bed or when you are leaving the house.
Next I would always recommend some sort of smart streaming device. These will turn any TV into a smart TV by giving you the ability to stream content from the internet. Obviously, when paired with a voice assistant this can also be accomplished with voice commands. The two most popular options in this category are the Google Chromecast and the Amazon Fire Stick.
After you have a voice assistant, some outlet adapters and a streaming device your options are endless. The thing that most people go for though are smart light bulbs. These are light bulbs that replace your existing bulbs and give you the ability to change the color of the light, dim them and turn them on and off with voice commands. If you don”t want to buy a ton of bulbs you can also replace your wall switches with smart switches. These give you the ability to turn anything connected to the switch on or off with your voice. This sometimes is best if you have a lot of fixtures that use the same switch or fixtures that have multiple bulbs in them. That way you just buy one switch instead of 4+ bulbs.
Conclusion
If you have done all of these things then you have a great start of a smart home. There are basically an unlimited amount of things that you can continue to add with more being added every day. The most popular are things like security cameras, LED light strips, thermostats and robot vacuums but there are a ton of others as well.
The one thing to keep in mind though is that with everything you add you are adding another device that has to access your WiFi. If you add a bunch of smart devices and start to notice that you are getting a lot of dropped connections with your internet you should upgrade your router, I always recommend getting a good router anyways but if you want to get a smart home going a good router is key. It is basically the heart of your smart home. If it dies or runs poorly nothing else works. Luckily there are a ton of good routers out there and the prices are very affordable. I usually recommend Asus, TP-Link or Netgear routers.
Starting a smart home these days is very easy and can be done pretty inexpensively. To get a smart speaker, a video streaming dongle, some plug adapters and a light bulb or two can be found for around $200 or less. Especially if you can find some sales. A smart home adds a lot of benefits to your life and they are just cool to have. With the holidays approaching it is a great time to ask for some starter devices and/or get some to help somebody else start there own smart home.
If you are interested in any of these products you can click the links below to go straight to Amazon to take a look at them. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. If you do purchase something using this link I will earn a small commission on the sale at no extra charge to you. Obviously it is completely up to you whether or not you want to use this link but if you do, thank you very much. Please note that a lot of Google Nest products are not sold on Amazon so I will put links to the Google Store for those. I will not receive anything for sales at the Google Store.
Google Nest Smart Speakers and displays click here
Echo Devices click here
Chromecast click here
Fire TV click here
Smart Plug Adapters click here. I really like the TP-LINK Kasa adapters. You can find them here. You can also read my review of them here
Smart Light Bulbs click here