It is a clever solution, and it works for me with some of my dumber smart switches (I’ve been spoiled by Inovelli, but don’t want to buy another 9 of them just for bathrooms).
The idea is you set the brightness to 0 (or maybe try 1, if this doesn’t work for you) upon turning them off. That way, when they are turned on: they aren’t visibly illuminated at first. Then: the automation kicks them to the desired level. The downside is, the switches “don’t work” if home-assistant, or Z-Wave, goes down. A non-privy user would tap the switch and see no light. They wouldn’t know to hold the paddle down, double tap, whatever…
This in contrast to the other two solutions I can think of:
- Simply set the desired brightness when turned on, but this would result in blinding light for a second between turn on and level correction.
- A scheduled automation that sets the brightness and immediately turn off (if currently off) when the time of day changes (say, at sundown). This has the downside of a quick strobe occasionally during the day, and the appearance that the house is haunted.
There is one more solution I’ve thought of, but I haven’t tested yet. A variation of #2 above. On schedule, set the dimming rate as long as it will go. Set the brightness, turn off, and set the dimming rate back. The idea is to eliminate the strobe as the light hopefully doesn’t approach visible light. But: it will depend on whether the switch turns back on to the previous set-point (ideal), or if it turns back on to where it happened to be during the dim `tweening (not ideal).