The problem with buying this HomeKit stuff is if it has to be fitted, for someone like me who is useless at DIY it's a bit off putting.
A lot of it is pretty close to plug & play. I have nine lights being controlled, and after taking in the pros and cons, it was mostly a matter plugging in the Hue "Bridge" (an intermediary between Hue bulbs and HomeKit), unscrewing some normal light bulbs and screwing in the Hue light bulbs and telling Apple's Home app that they were there, and giving them names and such. Now I can push the Siri button on my Apple TV remote (or use Siri on my iPhone) and say "turn off the hallway light", or "set scene 'tv time'", and it Just Works.
A big point to note is, if you put smart light bulbs into fixtures controlled by hard-wired wall switches, and then turn off that wall switch... the lights are no longer smart - Siri can't will them to come on when you've deprived them of electricity. This may sound obvious, but I've watched numerous people complain bitterly about Hue lights because they decided they were going to use their existing wall switches anyway, and they were angry that the universe didn't change the laws of physics to accommodate them ("after all, I paid a lot of money for these light bulbs, so they should work the way I want").
You can get replacement in-wall smart switches from several companies (Lutron, iDevices, etc.), which are HomeKit compatible (and you can get licensed electricians to come install them, too, if you want), or you can just put smart light bulbs into lamps where you've arranged to have the socket power always on. In my case, the wall switch by the front door somewhat inconveniently controls the porch light and the ceiling fan, so sticking a
Hue Dimmer Switch on the wall next to the existing switchplate was a huge improvement. Now when I walk in the front door, I push one button and 4 lights around the room come on (if I tap "On" several more times, it cycles through five different lighting scenes of my choosing).
Having lights that can produce most any color sounds like mostly a party trick (I do have a scene called "rainbow" that sets every light to a different color, just for fun), but to me the huge win is being able to set any
color temperature of "white" light (as well as arbitrarily dimming any or all of the lights). Stark bluish-tinged "cool white" or "daylight white" when you want a ton of light, or much more yellow-tinged "warm white" for a more inviting and relaxed room. I commonly use the warmer tones in the evening, and it's a lot like Apple's Night Shift, but for the whole room. This is a tiny bit life-changing.
FWIW, I wanted better control of my porch light, with only the standard light bulb socket that equips most porches. I ended up getting an
iDevices Socket, and one of those little bulb-socket-to-2-prong-plug adapters, and a string of dimming-compatible outdoor LED rope lights. I ran the rope lights around the edge of the porch roof and put the other bits into a little weatherproof box fit over the existing porch light assembly (I'm sure iDevices wouldn't recommend this for outdoor use, but I think things are fairly well covered, literally and figuratively). I set up some rules in Apple's Home app to turn on the porch light at sunset, and then to dim it down every hour or so, until it's just a dim keyhole-finding glow for the last half of the night. Then it turns it off at sunrise. Now my porch light Just Works, and I don't have to worry about it ever. As far as DIY goes, I worked out the waterproof box, but I didn't do any electrician-type work for this or any other part of my smart lighting - just plugging/screwing things in.
