What a smart home actually costs for a 3-bedroom house in Sri Lanka

This is for the homeowner who has a 3-bedroom house in Sri Lanka, either finished or under renovation, and is trying to work out whether a smart home is actually in budget. We get this question every week on WhatsApp. The short answer is below. The rest of the article is the working out, so you can decide what you want to skip.

The quick answer

For a 3-bedroom house in Sri Lanka, here is what jobs actually cost us in 2026:

• Starter, around LKR 250,000 to 400,000. Smart bulbs in the living areas, one outdoor camera, a video doorbell, a gateway. Everything else stays manual.
• Mid-range, around LKR 600,000 to 900,000. Smart switches behind every wall switch in living areas and bedrooms. 3 to 4 cameras. Smart fan controls. App, voice and scene-switch control.
• Full system, around LKR 1.2M to 1.6M. Everything above, plus smart locks on the front and back doors, AC control in 3 rooms, motorised curtains in the living room and master, and a smart circuit breaker on the main board for energy monitoring.

These are turnkey figures, including products, wiring labour, programming, and a one-day handover with the family. The big variable is how many cameras and how many wall switches you replace. Those two line items move the total more than anything else.

How we actually price a job

Three numbers drive the quote on every site we visit. If you understand these, you can pressure-test any quote you get from anyone.

1. The number of switch positions you want to make smart. A standard 3-bedroom house in Sri Lanka has between 18 and 28 wall switches. Smart switches range from LKR 4,500 to LKR 11,000 each depending on protocol and gang count. So the wall-switch line alone is between LKR 80,000 and LKR 300,000 of the quote.
2. The number of cameras and where they go. A reliable outdoor camera is LKR 18,000 to LKR 35,000 installed. A 4-camera setup with a video doorbell is rarely below LKR 130,000 with cabling and brackets.
3. Whether the house has a neutral wire at every switch. Older Sri Lankan wiring often does not run neutral to the switch box. This rules out half the cheap smart-switch options on the market. Modules behind the switch are the workaround. They add LKR 1,500 to LKR 2,500 per gang.

If a quote does not break out those three numbers, ask for a revised one that does. It is the only honest way to compare two vendors.

Zone by zone, what we install

Living and dining area

This is where the system gets used every day, so it is worth the money. We install smart switches on every wall switch, two to four smart bulbs for scene lighting, and a scene switch on the wall next to the main entrance. Typical cost: LKR 90,000 to LKR 160,000. The scene switch alone is the single most loved upgrade in any house we have installed. Press once, the whole room reconfigures.

Kitchen

Skip most of it. A motion sensor under the cabinet for night-time light is useful. A smart socket on the kettle and the coffee machine is useful. Smart bulbs are usually a waste here because kitchen lighting in Sri Lankan homes is almost always plain ceiling tubes that you want bright, fast, manually. Typical cost: LKR 25,000 to LKR 50,000.

Bedrooms

Two things matter. A bedside scene switch that turns everything off, including the fan, and a curtain motor if the room gets harsh morning sun. Smart switches on the main light and the fan. Skip RGB bulbs in the bedroom unless you actually want them, they are a novelty. Per bedroom: LKR 35,000 to LKR 65,000.

Bathrooms

Motion-activated lighting and exhaust fan control. That is it. A motion sensor and a 2-gang module behind the wall switch is around LKR 12,000 per bathroom. The exhaust auto-running for 10 minutes after the lights go off is the kind of small thing that quietly improves the house.

Front entrance and outdoors

A video doorbell, a smart door lock, an outdoor camera covering the gate, and motion-triggered porch lights. This is usually LKR 130,000 to LKR 220,000 depending on the lock. The lock is the most expensive line item, between LKR 35,000 and LKR 110,000 depending on whether you want fingerprint, card, app and key, or the full set.

The main panel

One smart circuit breaker on the main feed gives you whole-house energy monitoring in the app and a remote cut-off. LKR 30,000 to LKR 45,000. We recommend this for any owner already paying over LKR 25,000 a month on electricity, because you usually find one or two appliances quietly running a lot more than expected.

The costs people forget

• The router. If your Wi-Fi is weak, your smart home will feel broken. Plan for a mesh setup. A 2-pack mesh router for a typical 3-bedroom house is LKR 25,000 to LKR 45,000. The mesh extends Zigbee range too, when paired with a wireless gateway.
• UPS or battery backup for the gateway. Power cuts will happen. A small UPS keeps the gateway and router online, so when power returns the system snaps back instantly. Budget LKR 12,000.
• Cabling and conduit during renovation. If walls are still open, run an extra Cat6 to every TV point and to the front gate. Even if you do not use it now, the next homeowner will thank you. LKR 8,000 to LKR 20,000 in cable.
• The handover session. An hour with the family showing them the app, the scenes, what to do during a power cut. We include this. Make sure your installer does too.

Where we tell people not to spend money

This part will not appear in any sales brochure. There are smart home items that, in a Sri Lankan home, are mostly novelty:

• Smart fridges and smart washing machines. The integration is usually shallow and the appliance lasts 10 years longer than the app does.
• Voice control for everything. Voice is useful for music and timers. Most people stop using it for lights within a month. The light switch is faster.
• Motorised curtains in every room. Worth it where the sun is brutal or the curtain is heavy. Not worth it in a guest bedroom you enter twice a year.
• Coloured RGB lighting in every fixture. Buy warm-white tunable bulbs in living areas, leave the rest as good plain LEDs. Colour novelty wears off; tunable white does not.

A real 3-bedroom in Battaramulla, March 2026

Single-storey house, 1,850 sq ft, family of four, finished build that the owner wanted upgraded after moving in. Brief was "start with what is useful, we will add later".

We installed: 12 smart switches across the house, 2 scene switches (entrance and master bedroom), 3 smart bulbs in the living room, a smart door lock on the front door, a video doorbell, two outdoor cameras (front gate and rear garden), a smart fan switch in the master, and a Zigbee gateway with a wired backbone to the router. Total invoice was LKR 712,000 including labour over 3 days.

What the family actually uses, 6 weeks later, in their own words: the bedside "all off" button every night, the front gate camera notification, the porch light auto-on at dusk, and the master bedroom curtain motor (they paid LKR 18,000 to add it after a month). Everything else gets used a few times a week. Nothing is unused.

Common mistakes we see

1. Buying every device on the first day. A smart home should be installed in passes. Pass one is lights and one camera. Live with it for a month. Then add. Otherwise you over-buy.
2. Mixing 4 brands and 3 apps. Each brand wants its own app and its own hub. By the time you have a Tuya bulb, a Xiaomi camera, a Google speaker and a generic Wi-Fi lock, the family stops using the system. Stay on one ecosystem.
3. Ignoring the router. A LKR 1.5M smart home on a LKR 6,000 router from 2019 will frustrate you every day.
4. Skipping the wired gateway. A wireless-only gateway works until the router restarts. A wired gateway is the difference between "the smart home is reliable" and "the smart home is mostly reliable".

Questions to ask any installer before you sign

• How many switch positions are in the quote? Show me the breakdown.
• What protocol are the switches, and do they need a hub?
• What happens during a power cut? When power comes back, does the system recover by itself?
• Is the gateway wired or wireless? Why did you pick that?
• Who do I call when something stops working in 18 months?

FAQs

Can I do this in phases?

Yes, and you should. The right way to build a smart home is to start with one zone, live with it for 4 to 6 weeks, then add the next zone. Picking an ecosystem on day one is what makes phasing work. Picking the wrong ecosystem on day one is what kills it.

Is a smart home worth it for a rental property?

For a long-term rental, a smart lock and a doorbell camera pay back almost immediately on saved trips for key handovers and access disputes. The rest, probably not. For a short-let or Airbnb, the same plus motion-triggered lights and a remote AC cut-off is a real cost saver.

Does the system still work if the internet is down?

Almost everything works locally. Lights, scenes, switches, motion sensors, locks and cameras (recording to local SD) keep running. What stops working is remote access from outside the house and voice control through cloud assistants. Get a gateway that does local control by default.

What happens if we move house?

The smart switches stay with the house (they are wired in), but everything plug-in or screwed-on, the cameras, bulbs, scene switches, the gateway, comes with you. Most jobs take a half day to relocate.

Does humidity damage smart switches?

Indoor switches, no. Outdoor cameras and doorbells, yes, if you buy badly. Make sure the IP rating is IP65 or higher for anything in covered outdoor positions, IP66 or IP67 for anything fully exposed. We have replaced cheap IP54 cameras that survived 11 months on the south coast.

If you want us to spec your house, send a floor plan or a 30-second video walkthrough on WhatsApp. We will come back with a real number, not a brochure. Talk to a specialist.