This is the decision that determines how satisfied you’ll be in five years, and it gets framed badly. The question isn’t which technology is superior — it’s how long you intend to live with the result.
The genuine trade-offs
Reliability. A wired signal travels down a dedicated cable. A wireless one competes with your neighbours’ networks, your microwave and everything else in the 2.4GHz band. With five devices you’ll never notice. With fifty, you will — as lights that respond after a pause, or occasionally not at all.
Batteries. This is the factor people underestimate most. Thirty wireless devices at one to three years per battery means you’re replacing something every month or two, forever. And it’s never the accessible one — it’s the sensor above the stairwell.
Cost. Wireless is cheaper upfront and much cheaper to install, because there’s no cable to route. Wired costs more initially and less over time, since there’s no battery replacement and hardware lifespans are measured in decades rather than years.
Retrofit difficulty. This is wireless’s real strength. In a finished house with solid floors, wireless can be installed in a day with no disruption. Wired might mean lifting floorboards. In a new build or renovation the calculus flips completely — cable at first fix costs almost nothing.
Lifespan. Wired systems commonly run 20+ years. Wireless devices are typically replaced every five to ten, either because the battery housing degrades or because the manufacturer stops supporting the protocol.
When wireless is genuinely the right answer
We say this to people regularly:
- You’re renting, or you’ll move within a few years
- You want one or two rooms, not a house
- Your budget is under about £3,000
- The property is listed or has fabric you can’t route cable through
- You’re testing whether you even like automation before committing
In all of those, wireless is the correct choice and a wired system would be poor value.
The hybrid most houses actually need
Almost every real installation is a mix, and anyone insisting on 100% wired is being dogmatic rather than practical.
Wire these: lighting circuits, wall switches, heating actuators, door entry, cameras, speakers, anything above head height, anything behind furniture.
Wireless is fine for: a sensor in a room you can’t reach, a temporary zone, an outbuilding at the end of the garden, retrofit into a solid-floor room where the cable cost genuinely can’t be justified.
The rule we work to is simple: wire anything that’s hard to reach or that people touch daily. Everything else can be wireless if the routing is genuinely difficult.
If you’re building or renovating, read this bit
Run the cable. Even if you’re undecided about automation entirely.
Cable at first fix costs a fraction of retrofitting the same routes later, and it commits you to nothing. If you never install a system, you’ve spent a small amount on infrastructure. If you do — in year one or year eight — you’ve saved 30–40% on the installation and avoided all the disruption.
It’s the cheapest decision in the whole process, and it’s the one people most often regret skipping.
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Jack Jones
Director, Westgate Property Solutions · Loxone Silver Partner