How to Build a Functional Smart Home When You'll Never Own a House Yourself

Gizmodo

22-07-2025

Ah, yes, the American dream. A house with a white picket fence, a dog, and as many products as you can pile into a pickup truck that you paid for in cash, which I'm told is a type of green paper you can exchange for goods and services. Sounds nice; sounds normal; sounds totally and completely out of reach.
The classic American dream may be dead, but at least we have the Internet of Things and the never-ending font of smart home products it's given rise to, right? I say that with my tongue ready to burst through my cheek like a post-gestation alien from Alien, but to be honest, I love my makeshift smart home. It makes me and my multitask-addled brain happy, because who has time for light switches and buttons? Certainly not I—I barely have time for paying my rent. Sorry, landlord, I simply don't have enough bandwidth today!
If you're like me, which is to say a debt-drowning millennial who will probably never own walls and a roof outright, and you still want to have a smart home that feels functional, I'm (at the very least) pleased to inform you that this particular feat is actually doable. In fact, I know it's doable because I've done it, and as one disillusioned American adult to another, I'm going to tell you how to build your own, too.
The first thing you'll need before you start smartening up your rented dwelling is a way to scream at all your gadgets. That means, if you don't already have one, you'll need a smart speaker. I personally use a 2nd-gen Google Nest Mini, and for a couple of reasons. I'm not going to lie, the number one reason is that I got one for free through Spotify, which ran a promotion back in 2019 for subscribers to its premium plan. The promotion has since ended, but the good news is that if you want to grab one yourself, you can scoop one up for as little as $30. Here's the deal with these speakers: they suck for playing music because they're frankly not built for that, but they do exactly what they need to in a smart home, which is to say, they understand commands poorly (all voice assistants suck, sorry).
One advantage that I think Google has over an Amazon Echo speaker with Alexa, for example, is its Google Home app, which feels a lot more streamlined for quick smart home control compared to Amazon's Alexa app. I also think that Google Assistant is slightly better at understanding commands, but to be honest, that's like trying to decide which apple you'd rather pull from the compost and take a bite of.
Either way, you'll need to make a choice here, because if you should want to expand the number of speakers in your apartment ever, you're not going to want to buy another speaker to replace the one you already have or, God forbid, live in a mixed Alexa and Google Assistant household. And once you make that choice, it's time to move on to the next most important facet of any smart apartment.
See Echo Speakers at Amazon
See Google Nest Mini (2nd Gen) at Amazon
I have absolutely no chill when it comes to lighting. I mean that both figuratively, in that I am authoritarian about the type of lights I use in my apartment, and also in a more literal sense, in that I hate cool lighting—warm only for me. As a result of that quirk, I have a lot of lamps in my 500-square-foot apartment. I have five, to be exact, but two of those contain three bulbs, and one of them contains two, so that's a grand total of 10 light bulbs in one small apartment, just from lamps.
As you might imagine, the smart lighting situation gets tricky pretty fast, but there are a few things you can do to make things less expensive and a little more manageable from a setup perspective. First, you can start by buying cheaper smart bulbs for the lamps that need them. Smart bulbs aren't necessary all of the time (I'll get into that in a moment), but they do offer some advantages, particularly the ability to dim or brighten them as needed. This is huge if you're as specific as me about lighting in your apartment. Brightness is also a feature that you do not have to shell out for the Philips Hue premium to attain.
My apartment is stocked almost entirely with Wyze smart home lighting, and though they haven't always been the most consistent bulbs (they require quite a few firmware updates throughout the year), but they are mostly solid for doing anything you'd want smart bulbs to do. They change color, they connect to Google Home, and they come in packs of four for $44. If you don't want Wyze bulbs, Govee also makes affordable smart bulbs that will do the trick.
The key here isn't just to have smart lighting, but also to label and assign all of your lamps correctly inside your chosen smart home app. In my case, that's the Google Home app, where you can connect all your devices and pair them with your smart speaker. To add a new device in the Google Home app all you need to do is navigate to the 'Device' tab at the bottom of the app and then tap 'Add' in the bottom-right corner. The app will ask what kind of device you want to add, where you want to add it, and then it should automatically look for devices on the same Wi-Fi network and prompt you to set it up (make sure your device is in the proper setup mode before you do that).
Loading those bulbs in isn't enough, though. You should also label everything appropriately, so when you want to yell at your speaker to turn something off, you're not just shouting 'Light 4.' Consider 'bedroom lamp,' or if you have more than one lamp in your bedroom, 'nightstand lamp,' and 'corner lamp.' Once you have everything labeled appropriately, you should also create groups so that you can turn swaths of lights on and off. I have my lights divided into 'bedroom' and 'living room,' so when I say, 'turn the living room lights on,' my Google speaker knows what I mean.
To create a speaker group:
Once you have your lights and other devices in the Google Home app and have everything labeled, it's time to start thinking about expanding your apartment.
See Wyze Bulbs at Amazon
See Govee Bulbs at Amazon
There's a secret to smart homes, and it's not always about buying smart products, per se. You can actually make dumb stuff smart with one very cheap gadget: smart outlets. Smart outlets, as the name suggests, are just plugs that you can connect to the internet and turn on/off at will. They obviously won't give a feature set beyond just on or off, but sometimes that's all you need. I've used smart outlets extensively in my makeshift smart apartment for all kinds of stuff.
If you have a nice lamp, for example, that doesn't take the type of bulb that comes in a smart variety (like a candelabra bulb), but you don't want to screw around turning it off and on manually all the time, try a smart outlet. These are especially great if you're gauche like me and still like to use cheap string lights around Christmas time and don't want to plug them in and take them out constantly. It's a game-changer if you celebrate Christmas with a tree, too, since being able to turn your tree on and off with a voice command is incredibly simple.
It's not just lights, though. You can also apply the same strategy to appliances. Before I got a window AC unit from July (more on that in a bit), I had a regular old dumb AC unit that needed to be turned off and on manually. It's not the biggest labor in the world having to press a button, but being able to use a voice command without getting your lazy, overheated ass up off the couch feels like a big perk when you actually have the ability.
Think of smart outlets as your way of filling in the gaps. The best part is you can get them cheaply on Amazon. This set from Amazon gives you four plugs for just $25. I own several similar smart plugs from a nondescript brand that I assume is based in China, and they work surprisingly well. Just make sure whichever product you pick is compatible with the platform you've chosen—in my case, Google. You may also have to download a separate app for setup purposes when you buy brands like this, so just keep that in mind. With anything you connect to the internet, there is inherently a security risk, so please keep that in mind also. If you're extra cautious about digital privacy and security, smart home life may not be the life for you, since every app, gadget, and online service you plug your information into opens up another avenue to having your data stolen. That's the tradeoff you have to make to be a lazy human in 2025.
See Smart Mini Plug at Amazon
There are obviously a lot of gadgets out there in the smart home world that are great for people with houses—thermostats, fridges, ovens, security cameras, and more. But if you live in an apartment like me you may not be able to take advantage of those. Or most of those, I should say. There are some appliances that you should consider, though, like a Wi-Fi-enabled AC unit. I own one from July, a millennial-friendly window unit that doesn't look like total shit, and being able to connect the AC to the Google Home app has been a game-changer.
One perk of having your AC unit connected to the internet is that you can turn if off or on remotely. When it's ridiculously hot out, I like to get my AC pumping before I get home from work so that it's actually cool in my apartment before I arrive. It's also great if you're away on vacation and you have a pet at home that you're worried about. Just pull open the July app and toggle your unit on. You can even select settings in the app like fan speed, temperature, and modes. Naturally, since it's Google-compatible, you can also activate the AC using your smart speaker, which is great in the morning when I want to lazily turn off my AC from bed.
Another worthy category of your smart home experience is entertainment. Most TVs nowadays are smart home-ready, so be sure to check if your particular panel can connect to the platform you've chosen. Using voice commands to turn your TV on or off or change the volume isn't necessary, but it can be handy in a pinch, like when your cat accidentally lies on the remote while you're trying to sleep and you don't feel like getting out of bed to turn it back off (a true story).
I also own a Chromecast streaming stick that I have plugged into a small TV in my bedroom. Since it's a Google product, it's naturally very compatible with the Google Home app and my Google smart speaker, so when I'm ready to go to bed, I can shout at the Google Assistant to 'stop casting' instead of whipping out my phone and disconnecting the stream from whatever app I'm using. You can also control volume with voice commands, but that feels maybe a little more annoying than using your phone as a remote.
As a bonus gadget, you can also consider installing smart blinds from companies like Ikea, which are compatible with both Google Assistant and Alexa. These need some minor installation unlike the other things I've recommended, but they're only mildly invasive, which is to say you probably won't have your security deposit withheld for tossing them up. My parents have their entire house set up with smart blinds, and I've been pretty impressed with how convenient it is to use voice controls to raise and lower them.
So those are my tips for giving yourself a smart home without breaking the bank or buying a $3,500 fridge. These gadgets obviously aren't going to give your apartment the highest IQ out there in the world of smart homes, but it's not going to flunk out of summer school, either. As a recap, here are the most important things you can do: