Smart Lighting — Honest Picks From a 22-Year Lutron Installer
Five real tiers of smart lighting in 2026. Lutron RA2 Select for luxury homes. Caseta for DIY. Kasa for budget. Hue for color scenes. RadioRA3 for the rare cases where RA2 isn't enough.
Lutron RA2 Select — the price-performance sweet spot
After 22 years installing every Lutron tier from Caseta to HomeWorks QSX, RA2 Select is the one I install at most luxury homes. It does 90% of what RadioRA3 does at 25-35% of the cost. Whole-home dimming, scenes, occupancy sensors, integration with Sonos and Apple Home, professional-grade hardware that ages 15-20 years. The reason it's the pick: it's the highest tier of Lutron that doesn't require ongoing dealer support to live with. After install, you can change scenes and add devices from the Lutron app yourself. RA3 locks that capability behind the dealer.
See RA2 Select →The lighting tiers — pick by budget and complexity
Smart lighting has five real tiers in 2026. The right pick depends on how many switches you're upgrading, whether you want scenes that span multiple rooms, and how much you trust yourself with the install.
Lutron RA2 Select
Whole-home tier. Wireless dimmers, switches, fan controls, occupancy sensors, Picos. App-managed scenes. $8-18K installed for a luxury home.
★ Rick's PickLutron RadioRA3
The reference top-tier. Dealer-programmed scenes, deeper integration capabilities, more devices per system. $25-60K installed. Only the rare cases need it.
ReferenceLutron Caseta
DIY-friendly entry tier. Same dimming quality as RA2/RA3 but limited to ~75 devices per hub. Best for 5-15 switches. $300-2,000 DIY.
DIY entryKasa (TP-Link)
The budget plug-and-play tier. Smart plugs, simple in-wall switches, no neutral wire required on some models. $15-30 per device.
BudgetPhilips Hue
Smart BULBS (not switches). Color, scenes, "movie mode" for theater rooms. Hue is right for color-heavy creative households; wrong if you're wiring whole-home dimming.
Bulb / ColorThe pick by budget
| Budget | Switches | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under $200 | 1-3 | Kasa or Caseta starter kit | Plug-and-play. No hub needed for Kasa. Good for a few rooms. |
| $200-$1,500 | 5-15 | Lutron Caseta | Same Lutron dimming quality as luxury tiers. DIY-installable. App + Picos. |
| $3,000-$8,000 | 15-40 | Lutron Caseta or RA2 Select | Caseta if you can DIY. RA2 Select if you want pro install and additional scene flexibility. |
| $8,000-$20,000 | 40-100 | Lutron RA2 Select | Rick's Pick. Whole-home dimming, occupancy sensors, scenes, Sonos integration. Pro install required. |
| $25,000+ | 100+ | Lutron RadioRA3 | Only for very large homes (10,000+ sq ft) or specific RA3-only features. |
Head-to-head comparisons
Why Lutron, mostly
I install Lutron because the hardware ages. Caseta dimmers from 2015 still work flawlessly in 2026. RA2 jobs from 2010 are still controlled by the same app (now Lutron app, formerly L-Connect / L-Home). The dimming itself — the actual quality of how the bulb behaves — is consistently better than Hue, Inovelli, Leviton, or anything else I've tried. Lutron sells one product (dimmers and switches) and they've done it for 65 years. It shows.
The trade-off is Lutron is conservative. No fancy color-changing scenes. No "wave your hand at the wall" gimmicks. Just dimmers that work, fade nicely, and integrate cleanly with the rest of the smart home. For Rick's install style — modular, durable, dealer-free maintenance — that's exactly right.