UK smart-home users: where do current wall controls and smart hardware fall short?

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Hi everyone,

We’re Repenic, a UK-based smart-home hardware company, and we’d really value some honest community input as part of our product research.

For those using smart-home hardware in the UK: where do you feel the current options fall short, particularly when it comes to wall controls, switches, dimmers, sockets or smart-bulb control?

We’re interested in anything that feels missing, poorly solved, difficult to source, or unnecessarily complicated.

For example:

  • Products that do not work well with UK/EU wiring or back-box standards
  • Physical controls that are confusing or impractical for other people in the home
  • Smart-bulb setups that are difficult to manage from the wall
  • Zigbee, Matter, Home Assistant, ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT compatibility issues
  • Products you have had to import, modify, build yourself or work around
  • Hardware that works technically but does not suit the rest of the interior
  • Features, materials, finishes or form factors you would like to see more of

We’re not using this thread to promote a specific product. We simply want to better understand what real users, installers and smart-home enthusiasts would like to see improved.

We’re especially interested in UK experiences, but thoughts from anywhere are very welcome.

Any frustrations, examples or ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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I recently made an exterior door bell by hacking a ZigBee scene switch, upgrading the battery capacity to extend time before battery changes, waterproofing the electronics and installing it in an IP rAted doorbell push switch because I couldn’t the life of me find one on the market. I appreciate that most home users use a video capable door bell but that wasn’t an option for my specific use scenario.

Another thing is that a lot of modern built houses in the UK have very shallow back boxes for light switches. So trying to install a light relay behind a switch without having to remove the back box and either chase out the masonry or wood joist is a necessary evil. A combined light switch (no neutral) and relay in either multi standard or fixed standards would be an excellent product (s) IMHO.

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On smart switches like this, the single-gang version fits fine, but the 2 and 3-gang ones don’t. There are just too many wires, and a standard surface-mounted back box is way too small for them. These smart switches were clearly designed with flexible wires in mind rather than solid-core. Because of that, I had to 3D-print some spacers.

On a different note, I’m also looking for a way to monitor the salt level in my water softener using the Zigbee protocol. It’s a pretty niche application, though I doubt there’s much of a commercial market for that kind of thing

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Hi, I run the Smart Home Newsletter (intro thread). Alongside it I’m building a data product for smart home businesses: structured market intelligence with things like product launches, compatibility reports and what users ask for and complain about. You can connect your own AI to it and ask questions like yours. That is what I did here, and I verified what came back before posting it.

The strongest signal I see for your list: controlling always-powered smart bulbs from the wall. This comes up again and again this year, and the wish is always the same: a switch that never cuts power to the bulbs, but still works for guests, kids, anyone who just presses it.

Interesting is that the existing solutions all have a downside that users describe. Decoupled mode on several popular switches gets complaints about lag between press and light. Retrofit modules that turn your existing switch into a remote exist (a new wired generation launched in June), but they sit behind a switch instead of being one, and there is at least 1 report of sleep/wake problems in local setups. The switches that do this well, with a real smart bulb mode and direct binding to the bulbs, are US form factor. And some users don’t want fully decoupled at all, because the switch is dead when the hub is down. Direct binding avoids that. So a UK form factor wall control with a bulb mode that binds directly to the bulbs would fill a real gap.

About the UK more general: the recurring requests I see (3-gang no-neutral, UK sockets with power monitoring) are aimed at the established brands. Budget options exist, so to me this looks like a trust and availability gap, not that the products don’t exist at all.

Two caveats: my data is global, not UK only, and these are demand signals from real discussions, not sized market gaps.

Hope this helps!

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Yeah, the multi-gang problem is a very real one. A single-gang can look perfectly manageable, but once you get into 2- and 3-gang setups, the combination of multiple modules, terminals and wiring can eat up the available space very quickly, especially with a standard surface-mounted back box.

The difference between flexible and solid-core wiring probably makes quite a difference here as well. Flexible conductors are much harder to neatly fold and position once you have several of them coming into the same enclosure. At that point, the physical volume of the wiring can become just as much of a limitation as the depth of the switch itself.

3D-printing spacers is actually a pretty sensible solution. It’s interesting how often the installation environment ends up being the constraint rather than the electronics themselves. Something can work perfectly on a bench, but become a completely different problem once you have to fit several modules and real-world wiring into an existing box.

We’ve been thinking about the same problem from the other direction too, not just what functionality can be put into a smart switch, but how much hardware you can realistically fit into a standard UK installation without making the installation unnecessarily difficult. It’s one of those details that probably deserves more attention than it gets.

And the water-softener idea caught my attention too. I had a look at the type you mentioned, with the block salt and clear salt compartment. The transparent lid makes checking it manually pretty easy, but I can definitely see the appeal of having the salt level exposed to Home Assistant instead, especially if it could simply give you a notification when it gets low rather than relying on remembering to check it.

There are actually some interesting approaches people have tried in the HA community, from ultrasonic/ToF sensors to very simple mechanical or magnetic solutions. The latter might be particularly interesting for a salt environment where you probably want to keep the electronics away from the salt and moisture.

Would be curious to see which approach you end up going with if you build one.

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Hi Daniel, thank you very much for taking the time to put this together and for sharing the underlying research with us. The distinction between recurring user-demand signals and formally sized market opportunities is particularly useful.

The point about controlling always-powered smart bulbs is especially interesting to us, because this is very close to one of the problems we are trying to solve with our Zigbee Smart Switch.

Our switch is designed to allow the physical wall control to remain familiar while the smart bulb stays permanently powered. It supports Zigbee Find & Bind, allowing the switch to communicate directly with compatible Zigbee devices rather than relying entirely on hub-based automations.

We think this distinction is important. “Decoupled mode” can solve the basic problem of keeping the bulb powered, but there is still a difference between simply separating the relay from the button and having the wall control communicate directly with the smart bulb. For a normal household, the ideal experience is still very simple: press the switch and the light responds, while the bulb remains available to the smart-home system.

The UK form-factor point is also particularly relevant to us. A lot of smart-home functionality already exists in some form, but the physical format, wiring requirements and installation constraints can make it much less practical for UK homes. That is one of the reasons we are developing the range as a complete UK smart-home hardware system rather than treating each product as an isolated device.

Regarding the no-neutral point, our current Smart Socket does require a neutral connection, but this is something we are actively looking at for future product development. We plan to develop no-neutral versions of both our smart switches and smart sockets, specifically because we recognise how important this is for UK retrofit and older properties.

The 3-gang no-neutral and UK power-monitoring socket signals are therefore particularly interesting to us. They are useful not simply as evidence that people want another smart switch or socket, but as indicators of where the overall installation experience can still be improved.

And thank you for the caveats around the data being global and representing demand signals rather than market sizing. We really appreciate that distinction — it makes the research much more useful for us when thinking about product development and prioritisation.

Thanks again for sharing this. We’ll definitely be following the Smart Home Newsletter and the work you’re building around the data product.

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That’s really helpful feedback,especially the fact that you ended up building the doorbell yourself because you couldn’t find something on the market that suited your particular use case.

I think that’s exactly the kind of example we were hoping to hear about with this thread. It doesn’t necessarily mean everyone needs the same type of doorbell, but it’s interesting to see where the available products don’t quite fit a specific installation or use case, and people end up having to modify something themselves.

The shallow back-box issue is also very relevant to us. We’ve taken a slightly different approach from using a separate relay behind a conventional switch. Our faceplates and smart modules are separate, so they can be combined in different configurations depending on the circuit and type of control required.

Our current Smart Switch and Smart Dimmer are both 25mm deep and no-neutral, which helps with the shallower UK back boxes. We’re also continuing to look at whether we can make future versions thinner. Where space is particularly tight, we currently use a spacer rather than modifying the back box or wall.

The point you made about combining the switch and relay is interesting too — particularly the idea of avoiding extra hardware behind the switch altogether.

Thanks for sharing both examples. It’s really useful to hear about the things you’ve actually had to work around in your own installation.

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Just reading this and thinking out loud. A replacement for a UK ceiling rose that incorporates a relay or dimmer could be something that would solve a lot of these wall switch issues. There is a neutral supply, as well as a switched line. No need to then worry about 2 or more way switching and all that’s involved there. The issue as it stands now is you can fit a relay in the rose but its down to space.

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I’m at the beginning with HA and the complete renovation of a building that was built with different styles starting from 200 years ago, and most recently extended early 1990s. No existing wiring or fittings with survive this, so everything is possible wrt lighting and switches.

I’ve not begun to look at those options yet, but my first experience is with ZigBee sensors (monitoring the damp and progress through improvements) which I like very much, so your support for that is a plus for me.

Some things I anticipate being important:

  • simple fallback to manual operation (I would think that’s a safety requirement but am not sure)
  • a range of switch and lighting styles, mostly retro for us (we have an old quirky building and will have a country kitchen so aesthetics will be key for me and WAF)
  • privacy and data sovereignty. No cloud, respect for us as, humans, so no bait and switch, moving goalposts, extras through subscriptions etc (I’m suspicious of anything corporate such as Matter)
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I’ve found that the UK light circuits, the back box is too small to fit a switch, and if the house is even remotely old (like 15years plus), then its only switched live that goes to the switch anyway. So far all my “smart” lights should really be called “smart ceiling rose” because the switch sits behind that in the loft. The benefit to this being that the “manual” switch still works even if zigbee is offline. I did do a blog on the wiring setup which is a loop circuit which i think is quite common for UK homes. That being said, i’ve never tackled dimmables, so that could be something. As for the hardware, its usually just a ZBMINI with neutral, i’ve found them to be a bit hit and miss, for example the one that powers my garage lights has no problem being commanded to turn on when a motion sensor detects someone has entered the garage. But the physical switch is flakey at best, sometimes not turning on atall. But the one in my hallway and office have been absolutely fine. That and I have swapped the one in the garage out, so perhaps its a signal issue (though the office is right next to the garage and that one is absolutely fine… Anyways, I would say you should focus on two things, either a dedicated ceiling rose with the switch built into the chocblock in the cieling rose. or for modern wiring, a smaller. switch that can sit behind the physical switches. Failing that, just a normal looking switch with the “smart switch” built into it.

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I too run my ceiling lights with zigbee relays in the loft, I live in a bungalow so this was easy to do. I too sometimes have a switch in my hall go a bit flakey. I assume this is due to the length of cable from the 4 switches I have on that circuit. I guess it needs some kind of decoupling capacitor, no Idea what as I have not bothered to look into it and working it out for myself is way above my abilities.

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I had to read this 4 times & arrived at the conclusion that the post you were replying to meant 2 different items - 3 gang no neutral switches & UK sockets with power monitoring.
All sockets have a neutral. It’s literally one of the prongs on the plug, so it’s impossible that the corresponding terminal has no neutral wire connected to it.

Figured I point this out before you waste time on R&D for a nonexistent scenario.

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You’re right, and my phrasing caused it. Those were two separate items: 3-gang no-neutral switches, and UK sockets with power monitoring. Not no-neutral sockets. Sorry for the ambiguity.

I went back and checked rather than just taking the point, because if my pipeline had tagged switch complaints as socket complaints that would be a problem on my end. It hasn’t. Of 118 records mentioning neutral, none is a user asking about a socket without one. They’re switches, dimmers and buttons. If anything the confusion runs the other way: people write “socket” meaning the back box behind a light switch, and those land under switches correctly.

The switch half does hold up, and it’s more specific than I made it sound. Three discussions between December and April, all in relation to Aqara, asking for a 3-gang UK wall switch, one of them specifically no-neutral. So it’s a gap at a particular brand people already trust rather than nothing on the market at all.

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Thank you for pointing that out!

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Thanks for taking the time to check this properly and clarify the distinction, that’s really helpful.x

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Aqara made loads of 3 gang, no neutral switches in the past & still do. Just because they’re not on for sale on the official UK site doesn’t mean they don’t work with UK standards - it just means that Aqara haven’t marketed them in the UK. People just need to use other shopping sites.

Have a look here & you can see them:

  • T1
  • D1
  • H1

I’ve got the H1M & H1 Pro versions of the H1. The variants I have do require neutrals, but they absolutely fit into a UK standard back box.

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Thanks for sharing this, and especially for explaining a bit more about your renovation.

The points you mentioned around manual fallback, aesthetics and Zigbee are actually very close to the thinking behind our smart products,especially Smart Toggle.

We wanted to keep the physical mechanical feel and the design aesthetics of a traditional switch, and then add the intelligence,rather than replacing the familiar wall control with something that feels like a piece of technology.

So the switch still has a proper mechanical movement and tactile click, giving you that familiar physical interaction for everyday use. At the same time, Zigbee adds the smart functionality in the background, including smart-bulb control and integration with platforms such as Home Assistant. With compatible Zigbee bulbs, the switch can also be used as a Zigbee control without cutting power to the bulb.

I also completely understand your point about aesthetics. With an older building, I imagine the switches need to feel like part of the architecture rather than something that has simply been added because the house is now “smart”. That balance between the physical feel, the design and the technology was one of the reasons we developed the range in the first place.

And your point about privacy and local control is interesting too. We think the intelligence should stay in the background and the basic physical interaction should remain simple and dependable. The Smart Toggle uses Zigbee rather than making the physical act of switching dependent on a cloud service; the exact cloud/local experience will of course also depend on the hub and smart-home platform you choose.

Out of curiosity, as you’re still at the planning stage of the renovation, what is your current plan for the lighting and wall controls?

And putting Repenic aside for a moment, what products or brands are you currently most drawn to for this project?I’d be really interested to know what you like about them and what makes them stand out to you.

Really appreciate you taking the time to share your experience with us.

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Thanks for sharing this, that’s really interesting. I can see why putting the smart module at the ceiling rose makes a lot of sense with the way UK lighting circuits are commonly wired. It also seems like a good compromise because you can keep the normal physical switch working even if Zigbee or HA is unavailable.

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I’ve no plans or brands in mind yet. Just using your thread to learn a bit.

Some of what you say is encouraging (traditional switch motion/feel) so that’s good. What I choose to do and how to connect will depend on whether fallback to manual and local first/privacy can be achieved. Those are more important to me than smart features.

Anything that connects to the cloud or which fails if anything fails in the smart infrastructure will be a no for us re lighting. Same with aesthetics. If it doesn’t look right it won’t make it past wife review, but me too strangely for once :rofl: So in fact that’s two aesthetic hurdles as we rarely agree on that!