What to decide before the walls are closed
Before walls and ceilings are closed up in a new house, you need to settle the smart-home infrastructure: where the equipment cabinet goes, which points get data cable, where empty conduit with draw wire is left, and where power is provided for blind motors, sensors and cameras. The actual system, apps and devices can be chosen later, even after you move in.
The cost gap between installing now and adding later is huge. Now it is a cable and a back box. Later it is chasing finished plaster, repainting, sometimes lifting tiles, all in a house you already live in.
The equipment cabinet: the heart of the system
Every cable ends up in one place: the operator's fibre arrives there, and it houses the router, the network switch, the controller, power supplies and sometimes the video recorder. That cabinet needs an accessible spot, sockets on a dedicated circuit and ventilation, because the kit gets warm. The space under the stairs works if you can open the door and stand in front of it.
In a two-storey house, plan a vertical riser between floors with plenty of spare capacity. In ten years you will want to run something through it that nobody is thinking of today.
Network: cable wherever signal must always be there
Concrete slabs and thick walls weaken Wi-Fi a lot, so in a new house the access points go on the ceiling of each floor, cabled and powered over the same line. Dedicated cables are also needed to the TV, the home-office desk, cameras, the gate intercom, and an access point in the garden or by the pool.
Allow extra: a second cable to the same point costs very little, and its absence shows the day the TV moves to another wall.
Lighting, blinds and curtains
Motorised blinds and curtains need power at every window, and room for the motor or a concealed track has to be built into the window and ceiling detail. For lighting, decide whether switches will control circuits through the system or directly, and ask the electrician for deep back boxes and a neutral at every switch: many smart modules will not work without one.
Wired or wireless is a question of reliability and budget. Even if you lean towards wireless, cable to the key points keeps the choice open. Lighting scenes have their own article.
Energy, pool and climate
In a new house people usually want the system to cover the solar panels and inverter, a possible battery, an EV charger, the pool pump and filtration, an air-source heat pump or other heat source, and garden irrigation. Each of those needs a data link to the equipment cabinet, or at least an empty duct to it.
On a house with a pool and solar panels (we delivered one such private house through the full cycle in 2022 to 2024), the link to the pool and energy equipment is buried during the services stage. Doing it later means digging up finished landscaping: paths, lawn, irrigation.
What can safely wait
The devices, the controller, the apps and the programming of scenes can all be decided after you move in, once you have lived in the house and know what you actually want automated. Technology here moves faster than a house gets built, and buying equipment a year before moving in rarely makes sense.
The only things that cannot wait are what goes inside walls, floors and the ground: cables, conduit, back boxes, power and the cabinet location.
Records and questions for the team
Before the walls are closed, ask for photos of every cable route with dimensions and a schedule with each cable labelled at both ends. Without it, a year later nobody will know which cable goes to the bedroom and which to the gate camera.
Ask the project team: where is the equipment cabinet and is it ventilated, how many cables go to each point, is there a neutral at the switches, where are the spare ducts between floors and to the garden. We go through these questions with the client during the services stage of every new house.