Building a Smart Home for Under £300: What's Actually Worth It in 2026

Smart home gear has had a quiet price collapse. Hue clones, Matter-compatible plugs and decent sensors are now genuinely affordable. Here's how we'd build a starter setup for under £300.

The £300 build

• Hub: Amazon Echo Show 8 or a spare iPad as a HomeKit hub — £0 if you already own either, £119 new.
• Smart bulbs: 6× Philips Hue White equivalents from Innr or LIFX — about £70 for six.
• Smart plugs: 4× TP-Link Tapo P110 (with energy monitoring) — about £40.
• Motion sensors: 2× Aqara or Hue Motion — about £45.
• Door/window sensors: 3× Aqara — about £30.
• Smart thermostat: Tado entry kit — about £80–£120 (the biggest single line).

Total: ~£285–£325 depending on whether you needed the hub.

What this gets you

Lights on motion when you walk in. Heating that turns off when nobody's home. Notifications when the front door opens unexpectedly. Energy use per appliance, so you can identify the £40/year fridge that's actually costing £90.

Where cheap kit is a false economy

Locks. A £45 smart lock from an unfamiliar brand is a security liability. Yale, August or Nuki only.

Cameras. Cheap cameras send footage to servers in jurisdictions you may not love. Pay for Ring, Eufy, or self-hosted UniFi.

Hubs from no-name brands. When the company shuts the cloud down, your hardware bricks. Stick with Amazon, Google, Apple, Hue, Aqara, IKEA.

The Matter question

Matter (the cross-ecosystem standard) is now mature enough that buying Matter-compatible kit is the safe default. It means your Hue bulbs work with HomeKit, your TP-Link plugs work with Alexa, etc. Avoid anything that's still proprietary-cloud-only.

Bottom line

You can build a useful smart home for under £300 if you stick to the categories where commodity hardware is fine (bulbs, plugs, sensors) and pay up only for security-critical gear (locks, cameras). Don't try to save money on the things that matter when they fail.