Whenever I am asked for advice on smart home lights, my #1 suggestion since 2015 has been to use Lutron Caséta products. I recommend them without hesitation because they perform so well. Some of the most popular products in this line are wall switches, which work by replacing your current switch. That way, anyone in the room can just press a button on the wall to turn lights on or off the way that they would with any other wall switch. But because these products work with HomeKit, they also can be controlled via an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Siri, HomePod, etc.. And they can also be programmed so that whenever X happens (such as a time of day, a sensor is triggered, or other event) the light can go on or off. Perhaps best of all, Lutron Caséta devices use a proprietary wireless network to talk to each other that is rock solid.
In 2015, I reviewed the original Lutron Caséta Wireless Dimmer, and I now have many of those devices in my house. I recently decided to purchase a few more Lutron switches, and I tried out two of the newest products in the Lutron Caséta family: the Diva Smart Dimmer Switch ($70 on Amazon) and Claro Smart Switch ($60 on Amazon). These products have been on the market for about a year, and like the other Lutron Caséta products, they work great.
An elegant look that works well
The Caséta Diva and Caséta Claro share a similar, elegant look. Each has a paddle-style on/off switch. The difference is that the Diva includes the ability to dim lights—either from a device like an iPhone or by using a slider that is just to the right of the switch. The Claro only supports on or off. In the following picture, the Diva is on the left, and the Claro is in the middle and the right:
The wall plate that I am using around these three switches is a Lutron Claro 3 Gang Decorator/Rocker Wallplate ($13 on Amazon). You can purchase Lutron switches and wallplates in a number of different colors.
For the Diva, you can press the top of the paddle to turn on the light to the level of brightness set with the slider. Or, double-press the top of the paddle for full brightness, regardless of the slider's position. Press the bottom of the paddle to turn the light off. With the Lutron or Home app (or Siri), you can set the dimmer to whatever you want from 0% to 100%, regardless of what position the physical slider on the Diva is in.
I'm using the Diva to control a light on an outside porch. I'm using the two Claro switches to turn fans on or off—one inside my living room, and one on the outside porch. Note that Lutron also sells a switch ($60 on Amazon) that is designed for a fan and that also controls the fan speed, but the fans in my house don't support that function—the speed is controlled with a pull chain—so I just needed a simple on/off switch.
One advantage of the Diva dimmer over Lutron's original smart dimmer switch (which Lutron still sells; $60 on Amazon) is that the Diva has a more elegant, less technical look. In the below picture, the switch on the right is the original smart dimmer switch:
There are light bars to the side on the Caséta Diva and the Caséta Claro. For the Diva, the intensity of the light bar increases or decreases based upon how bright or dim you have the light set. When the switch is turned off, the light bar is very dim. It is difficult to capture that in a photograph, so in real like it looks nicer than what you see in the below picture when the Diva switch is off:
The light bars on the side of the switches make it easier to see the switches and also make it more obvious that a switch is accepting a command from the app. However, using the Lutron app, you can turn the light bars on or off. Or you can make them appear only in certain states. For example, you can decide that when the switch is off the light bar is also off so that it doesn't bother you in the dark. Or you can decide that when the switch is off the light bar is on so that it is easier to find the switch in the dark. I think that these light bars are a nice touch so for now I have them on all of the time, but it is also great that you can make then go away if you don't want them.
The Diva and Claro swtiches support LED lights up to 150 watts and incandescent or halogen lights of up to 600 watts. Some older LED lights don't work as well with a dimmer switch, but you can use a "trim" feature in the Lutron app to set a minimum and maximum brightness level.
Wireless control
Before you can wirelessly control any Lutron Caséta devices in your house using an app, Siri, etc., you have to have a Lutron Smart Hub. You can buy the hub by itself for $80 from Amazon, or you can get it as part of a kit such as a Diva and a Hub together for $107 from Amazon. Once you have a single hub, connect it to power and to a wired Ethernet Internet connection. You can then control up to 75 different Lutron Caséta devices.
You can control the Caséta Diva and the Caséta Claro on your iPhone using the Lutron app, but you don't need to do so. Lutron devices work great with Apple's HomeKit technology, so you can control them using the built-in Home app on the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac.
You can also create automations. For example, the lights on the porch in the front of my house come on near sunset and go off near sunrise. I have another automation that turns on my back porch light for five minutes (using the Lutron Diva Smart Dimmer Switch) when motion is detected on the back porch using my Eufy camera that detects motion and records video of my back porch.
And lights can work together. From my living room, I often talk out loud to Siri (picked up from my HomePod mini) and ask it to turn on my backyard lights, which causes a number of different lights to come on, most of which are connected to a Lutron Caséta switch of one sort or another.
Installation
Although technology and electricity seem like close cousins, I know a lot about technology but very little about electricity. I have successfully installedLutron wall switches in the past when there was just one of them. Each one took me a while to do so, and it was never as simple as the instructions or YouTube videos made it seem, but I did it and everything worked. However, for many of the other Lutron wall switches in my house, including the ones that had multiple wall switches next to each other, I had an electrician do the installation.
When I started to install the Diva and two Claro switches next to each other, I tried to do it with just the help of my teenage son, who has a pretty good handle on circuits. However, I quickly discovered that I was confused by the huge number of cords packed together so tightly in my wall. The Diva doesn't require a neutral wire but the Claro does, and for my wall, the line, load, neutral, and ground wires for each switch were difficult for me to distinguish. Fortunately, I have a relative who understands this stuff way better than I do and he was nice enough to come to my house and help me get everything working. (Thanks, Steve!) Keep this in mind when you decide whether you are going to install these switches yourself or hire an electrician.
One difference that I noted between the Diva / Claro and Lutron's original smart dimmer switch is that there are metal "wings" on the side of the original smart dimmer switch (three on each side) that you need to break off if you are installing one switch right next to another one. Here is what the original smart dimmer switch looks like before any wings are snapped off:
The Diva and Claro switches lack these wings, so it is easier to install them adjacent to another switch:
Although I didn't try this myself, one advantage of the Diva and Claro switches is that they can also work with an accessory switch sold by Lutron ($30 on Amazon). That way, you can have a second wall switch that turns on or off the same light. Or, if you already have a second switch that controls the same light, it should continue to operate as normal once you install the provided jumper wire, although I didn’t test this. Note that the second switch won't act as a dimmer.
Dependability
Lutron Caséta devices have worked very well, and I frequently hear others say the same thing. Unlike other smart home devices in my house that can sometimes seem to have a mind of their own and occasionally won't respond to my commands, the Lutron devices just work. Over the last eight years, I have had two occasions when a Lutron device stopped working. One stopped working when we had some other electrical work taking place, and a simple reset fixed the problem. A few months ago, one of my older original dimmer switches stopped working. I sent in a support request and after talking to someone at Lutron about my problem, he sent me a replacement unit for free.
So based on my experience, these products work very well, and if you are unlucky enough to have an issue, customer support is fantastic.
Conclusion
After starting with my first Lutron Caséta dimmer switch eight years ago, I've now installed Lutron switches—some with dimmers, some without—at 9 different locations in my house. Plus, I have four Lutron Caséta lamp dimmers ($45 on Amazon) that plug in to an outlet and control lamps in my house. Everything works great. Anyone not using the app can just press a button on the wall, just like a traditional switch, or the lights can be controlled using the numerous methods noted above. These newest Lutron Caséta devices, the Diva and the Claro, work just as well as the units that I have been using for years, plus they look a little nicer thanks to the paddle and small slider instead of multiple buttons. These are great devices to install in a smart home. And if you are looking for a good gift for someone else who already has a Lutron hub, I suspect that they would love being able to control yet another switch.
Click here for the Lutron Caséta Diva Smart Dimmer Switch ($70 on Amazon)
Click here for the Lutron Caséta Claro Smart Switch ($60 on Amazon)
