There's a lot of cheap crap on the market but there's also some great designs out there. For example, I've got this light control system installed in my home:

There's a lot of cheap crap on the market but there's also some great designs out there. For example, I've got this light control system installed in my home: http://houm.io/ http://houm.io/ Wireless, battery-free buttons that you can put anywhere you like. I keep one of them on my night stand. Rest of the switches look and work just like regular light switches. Except the switches are connected to the system, so I can activate pre-defined scenes with one click of a button. No need to use a smartphone. The scenes are configured through a multi-platform web client. The client, by the way, uses a regular REST API so I can control my lights with cURL too. Over the internet :) It's more expensive, but it just works.