The Smart Home Decisions You Make Before Insulation

"Smart home" gets sold as a finish-stage upgrade — some Nest thermostats, a Ring doorbell, a couple of smart switches. Real smart homes are not finish-stage. They're rough-in stage. Every wire that needs to be in a wall has to be there before drywall closes the wall. The smart-home decisions you make at electrical rough-in determine whether your home is genuinely intelligent for the next twenty years, or whether it's a kludge of off-brand devices that don't talk to each other.

The wiring closet — ground zero

Every serious smart home starts with a structured wiring closet (also called a network closet, AV closet, or low-voltage panel). It's the room or wall cabinet where every low-voltage wire in the house terminates — ethernet, coax, security, audio, lighting control.

Requirements:

• Dedicated space: minimum 24" wide x 6" deep, ideally a walk-in closet 4'x4' or larger
• Cooled or at minimum well-ventilated (network gear runs hot)
• Dedicated 20-amp circuit, ideally on a UPS (battery backup)
• Located centrally in the house (to minimize cable runs)
• Accessible (not buried behind drywall — you'll need to add and change gear over decades)

If your builder is putting your network gear in a hall closet next to the water heater, push back. Treat it as a real room.

Cabling — what to pull

Pull more cable than you think you need. Cable is cheap, walls are expensive.

• CAT6A ethernet: the standard. Supports 10-gigabit speeds and PoE+ for cameras and access points. Pull two drops to every TV location, every desk, every kitchen island, every primary room corner. Plan for at least 30–50 drops across a typical custom home.
• Coax (RG-6 quad-shield): still useful for over-the-air antennas, some satellite, some cameras. Pull one to every TV location.
• Speaker cable (16/2 or 14/2): for whole-house audio. Pull to ceilings in primary spaces and bath ceilings.
• Conduit (1" PVC, smurf tube): empty conduit from the network closet to a central attic chase. The single most-future-proof thing you can do. Pulls future cable types (whatever the next generation is) without opening walls.
• Outdoor camera locations: CAT6A to every soffit corner and key door/window. Pull whether or not you're installing cameras day one.
• Access point locations: CAT6A to ceiling drops every 30–40 feet for Wi-Fi 6/7 access points. Two or three access points minimum on most homes; more on multi-story.

Lighting control — the platform choice

Lighting control is the single most-impactful smart home decision. Pick wrong and you live with annoyance for years. Pick right and your house feels effortless. The serious choices:

• Lutron Caseta: consumer-tier, retrofit-friendly, $50–$100 per switch. Good for adding to an existing home. Underwhelming on a real custom build.
• Lutron RA2 Select: the mid-tier sweet spot. $150–$300 per switch including hub. Whole-house control, app integration, scene-based programming. Where most custom homes should land.
• Lutron HomeWorks QSX: the architectural premium. $400–$800 per switch. Custom engraved keypads, sophisticated scene programming, integration with everything. For high-end custom and luxury.
• Control4 lighting: excellent but typically only worth it when you're already running Control4 for AV. Pricier than Lutron RA2 at similar features.

Whatever you choose, get serious commitment from your electrician that they know how to install it. Lutron certified installers exist; insist on one for HomeWorks. RA2 is more forgiving but still benefits from someone who's installed it before.

AV and entertainment

The audio/video infrastructure decisions:

• In-wall and in-ceiling speakers (Sonos In-Ceiling, Sonance, Triad): distributed audio in primary spaces — kitchen, dining, family, primary suite, outdoor. Wired to a central amp (Sonos Amp, Denon HEOS, etc.)
• Sonos vs. distributed: Sonos is the consumer-tier easy answer. Higher-end distributed audio (Crestron, Control4, Sonance amp-based) is more flexible and higher fidelity.
• TV locations: at minimum, CAT6A and two AC outlets at every TV location. Conduit for HDMI from TV location to a central rack is the premium move — allows hiding sources in a closet and using fiber HDMI for clean look.
• Outdoor audio: weather-rated speakers in eaves or at patio — wire to weather-rated amp in the network closet

Security and access

• Security system (DSC, Honeywell, Alarm.com): door and window sensors, motion detectors, glass break, smoke/CO. Hardwired is more reliable than wireless — pull wire to every door, every ground-floor window, and key motion locations.
• Cameras: wired IP cameras (CAT6A, PoE). Ubiquiti, Hikvision, or Reolink for self-managed; Ring or Eufy for cloud-managed. Plan locations to cover all approaches: front, back, garage, side yards.
• Smart locks: battery powered but better with wired backup at primary entries. Most modern smart locks work over Z-Wave or Matter and integrate with home automation.
• Video doorbells: Ring is the volume choice. Doorbird (higher end) integrates better with Control4/Crestron.
• Garage door control: LiftMaster MyQ is the standard; integrates with most smart home platforms

Climate, water, and other systems

• Thermostat: Ecobee (consumer), Nest (consumer), or a system-matched thermostat for high-end HVAC. Some Mitsubishi and Daikin systems need their own thermostat for full functionality.
• Smart water shutoff (Flo by Moen, Phyn): detects leaks and automatically shuts the main. Installed at the main water line, ~$700–$1,500. Pays for itself the first time a pipe bursts.
• Smart sprinkler controller (Rachio, Hunter Hydrawise): Wi-Fi enabled irrigation. Standard now.
• Smart pool/spa controls: Pentair IntelliConnect, Hayward OmniLogic — needed if you have a pool, install with the pool
• EV charger: Tesla Wall Connector or universal (ChargePoint, Wallbox). Hardwired to a dedicated 60-amp circuit minimum, pre-wired for two chargers if you'll eventually have two EVs

The hub — who runs the house?

The platform decision:

• Apple HomeKit / Google Home / Amazon Alexa: consumer-tier, works for basic light/lock/thermostat integration. Limited for whole-house
• Home Assistant (open source): incredibly powerful, deeply customizable, requires technical owner. Free.
• Hubitat: middle ground — consumer-friendly but powerful. Local processing.
• Control4: the integrator-installed standard for serious smart homes. Requires a Control4 dealer to program. Best whole-house experience for non-technical owners.
• Crestron / Savant: ultra-premium. Used in $5M+ homes. Require dealer programming and ongoing maintenance.
• Matter / Thread: the emerging standard that promises cross-platform device compatibility. Worth watching but still maturing.

The non-negotiable conduit pull

If you do nothing else from this article, pull 1" (or larger) conduit from your network closet to:

1. The attic (for future cable runs anywhere in the house)
2. The crawlspace or under the slab (for future cable runs at floor level)
3. Every TV location (for future HDMI replacements)
4. Outside the house at two opposite corners (for future exterior systems)

Conduit costs almost nothing to install during framing. It's near-impossible to add later. The empty pipe is the most valuable thing in your smart home — it lets you pull whatever cable type the next decade requires without opening a single wall.

— Margaret Larsen, COO. Eighteen years guiding clients from first conversation through groundbreaking — budgets, contracts, permits, financing. Get the free Ultimate Home Building Checklist for the field-tested list we walk every Angel home through.