Home automation is the easiest thing to oversell and the easiest to regret. Most of what gets installed in Indian homes is used enthusiastically for a month and then abandoned, while the two or three genuinely useful systems were never specified at all.
Here is an honest view of home automation — what earns its place, what does not, and the wiring decisions you have to make before the plaster goes on.
The test
Before specifying anything, ask one question: does this save a daily action, or does it replace a switch with an app?
Replacing a switch with an app is worse than a switch. The switch works for guests, for staff, for your parents, when the wifi is down, and when the phone is charging in another room. Automation earns its place when it does something a switch cannot.
What genuinely earns its place
Lighting scenes
The strongest case by a distance. A living room with four or five lighting circuits has dozens of possible combinations, and nobody adjusts five dimmers individually every evening. Three scenes — bright, evening, late — on a single keypad means the layered lighting scheme you paid for actually gets used.
This is the one piece of automation that changes daily life in almost every home we do.
Motorised curtains and blinds
Genuinely useful on tall or hard-to-reach windows, on a large run of glazing, and in a bedroom where reaching the far end of a four-metre track means walking around the bed. Less compelling on a standard window you can reach.
Where they shine is on a schedule: blinds that close against the afternoon sun on a west elevation before the room heats up, rather than after.
Air conditioning control
Central control and scheduling across a large house saves real money and real discomfort. Being able to see that three ACs are running in empty rooms is worth more than any app feature.
Security and access
Video door phone with remote answering, cameras, and a smart lock for staff and deliveries. Practical rather than glamorous, and the category clients use most consistently.
Water management
Underappreciated and genuinely valuable in Delhi: tank level monitoring, automatic pump control, and leak detection. A pump that runs dry or a tank that overflows at 3am is a real and recurring household problem that automation actually solves.
What usually does not
Voice control as the primary interface. Pleasant as an addition, frustrating as the only route. Accents, background noise, and a guest who does not know the command names all break it.
Colour-changing lighting throughout. Almost nobody wants a purple living room twice. Warm dimmable light in every fitting is worth far more than sixteen million colours in a few.
Smart appliances that need their own app. A refrigerator with a screen is a refrigerator with a screen that will be unsupported in five years.
Automating things you do once a day anyway. Opening a bedroom door, switching on a bathroom light.
Multi-room audio in rooms nobody sits in. Two rooms done well beats seven done thinly.
The wiring decisions that cannot wait
Almost all of this is decided at first fix. Even if you are not installing automation now, a modest amount of provision keeps the door open cheaply.
- Neutral wire at every switch position. Most smart switches need it, and most older Indian wiring does not have it. Adding it later means opening walls
- Structured cabling. Ethernet to the television positions, the study, access points and the main AV location. Wifi is not a substitute for a wired backbone
- A services cupboard with power, ventilation and space for a rack. Routers and controllers generate heat and must not live in a sealed cupboard
- Power at every curtain track position, even if you motorise later
- Conduit between the screen and the media unit, 50mm minimum
- Deeper back boxes at switch positions, because smart modules need the depth
- Cabling to AC indoor units for central control
- Keypad positions planned against the way you move through the house, not placed symmetrically
Wired, wireless, or hybrid
Wired systems are the most reliable and the right answer for a house under construction. They cost more, they must be decided early, and they keep working when the internet does not.
Wireless systems are the practical answer for a finished home, since nothing needs chasing into walls. They depend on a solid network, which means proper access points rather than one router in a corner.
A hybrid suits most projects: wired for lighting and anything critical, wireless for the layers you may change.
Whichever route, insist that everything keeps a manual override. If a system failure means you cannot turn on a light, the system is not fit for a home.
Questions to ask a vendor
- What happens when the internet is down? What still works?
- Is there a physical switch for every automated circuit?
- Is this a local system or cloud-dependent, and what happens if the company stops operating?
- Who supports it in three years, and what does that cost?
- Can another integrator work on it, or am I locked to you?
- How does a guest or a member of staff operate it without an app?
That last question tells you most of what you need to know about whether a system was designed for a home or for a demonstration.
A sensible starting point
For most luxury homes we would specify: lighting scenes on keypads with full manual override, motorised blinds on the large and awkward windows only, central AC control, a video door phone and cameras, water tank and pump monitoring — and a properly wired network behind all of it.
Then leave provision for the rest. Automation dates faster than any other part of a house, and the cabling you install now will outlive three generations of the hardware plugged into it.
Getting it right
We plan automation as part of the electrical and ceiling drawings rather than as a late addition, because the difference between a home that uses its systems and one that abandons them is almost entirely decided at first fix.
If you are planning a home, tell us about it. See also lighting design, what a drawing set contains, and villa design.
About Pochē Aesthetics
Pochē Aesthetics is a luxury residential architecture and interior design practice based in Greater Kailash, New Delhi, founded by architect Niyati Satsangi. We design private homes — farmhouses, villas and apartments — across Delhi NCR and India, handling architecture, interiors, materials, lighting and styling as one connected commission. More about the practice.