Most smart home pricing online is either a gadget list from a retailer or a "contact us" wall from an integrator. Neither helps you budget. This is the honest version from a company that designs and installs these systems every week in Canberra and Sydney.
The short answer
For a fully integrated system (one app, one server, everything talking to each other) in a typical Australian home:
- Entry, existing home, 3 to 4 bedrooms: roughly $10,000 to $18,000. Smart lighting on every circuit, a few sensors, a couple of cameras and a doorbell, proper WiFi, one wall display.
- Mid, existing home or new build: roughly $20,000 to $40,000. Everything above plus climate control, blinds, more cameras, more displays, whole-home audio in the main areas.
- Full home, new build, wired control: $50,000 and up. KNX or similar wired backbone, every room, every service, designed into the build from the plans.
Those are installed, programmed, working numbers, not hardware-only. They are indicative. Your floor plan, wall count and what you actually want will move them.
What actually drives the price
Number of lighting circuits. This is the single biggest driver in an existing home. Every circuit that becomes smart needs a relay behind the switch (we use Shelly for retrofits) plus the electrician's time to fit it. A 3-bedroom home might have 18 to 25 circuits. A large two-storey home can have 40 plus.
Wired versus wireless. A new build lets you run a wired control bus (KNX). It is more expensive up front and far more robust for 20 plus years. An existing home almost always goes wireless relays behind the existing switches. No rewiring, no plaster damage, and it is a fraction of the cost.
Cameras and security. Good PoE cameras with local recording (no monthly cloud fee) cost more than a doorbell cam from the shops, but they keep working when the internet drops and nobody else has your footage. Four cameras plus a recorder is usually a $2,500 to $4,500 line item installed.
Networking. This is the part people skip and regret. Smart homes put 50 to 150 devices on your WiFi. A single ISP router will not cope. Budget $1,500 to $4,000 for proper access points and a switch, sized from your floor plan.
Displays and control. Wall-mounted displays, keypads and physical scene switches. Nice to have, easy to overspend on. One good display in the kitchen and your phone covers most homes.
Programming. The hardware is maybe 60 percent of the cost. The rest is design and configuration: scenes, schedules, presence logic, integrations, testing. Cheap quotes usually mean this part is missing, and it is the part that makes the system feel effortless instead of annoying.
Where people overspend
- Buying gadgets first, then trying to make them work together. Ecosystem chaos costs more to untangle than to design properly.
- Voice assistants everywhere. Useful in two rooms, ignored in the rest.
- iPads on every wall. Batteries swell, apps log out, nobody uses them after month three.
- Cloud subscriptions. Anything with a monthly fee for basic function is a red flag.
Where people underspend
- Network. See above.
- A proper local server. Your automation should run in your house, not in someone else's data centre.
- Presence sensing. Motion sensors are cheap and dumb. Millimetre-wave presence sensors are what make lighting feel automatic instead of switching off while you sit still.
What a real quote looks like
We price room by room off your floor plan: every circuit, every sensor, every device, with a per-line price from a published price sheet, plus programming hours and GST. You should be able to see exactly what each room costs and remove anything you do not want. If a quote is one number on one page, ask for the breakdown.
Next step
If you are in Canberra, Queanbeyan or Sydney, send us your plans or book a free consult on the contact page. If you are earlier than that, our homeowners page walks through what an ILS system includes and how retrofits work.
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