Pricing Guide | Southern Colorado
Smart Home Cost in
Southern Colorado.
It depends. But here is the real range, broken down by tier, by service, and by the stuff most installers will not put in writing.
The Honest Answer
$1,000 to $50,000 and Up. Now Let's Be Specific.
Most smart home pricing pages are useless. They say "every home is different" and then funnel you into a form. You leave the page knowing nothing. So here is the honest version. A single smart thermostat with self-install is under $300 in parts and an hour of professional setup. A whole-home Lutron RadioRA 3 system with a dedicated theater, eight cameras, structured wiring, and a unified Apple Home or Crestron front end can clear $50,000 without anyone breaking a sweat. Most homeowners in Pueblo, Colorado Springs, and Fountain land somewhere between $4,000 and $15,000 for the work that actually changes how their house feels. We will tell you which tier you are in by the end of a thirty-minute walkthrough. The number on the proposal will not change unless the scope does. That is the contract.
What Drives Cost
Five Things Set the Number
Scope. One room is cheap. Whole-home is not. A smart-lighting retrofit in a single living room with a Lutron Caseta hub and four switches runs around $700 in gear plus an hour or two of labor. The same brand of switch installed across a 2,800 square foot home with thirty zones is closer to $4,500 in gear before anyone touches a wire. Scope is the single biggest lever you control. We will help you decide what actually deserves to be smart and what is fine staying dumb.
Gear tier. Consumer brands like TP-Link Kasa or basic Wyze cameras are inexpensive and fine for a starter setup. Prosumer gear like Lutron Caseta, Ubiquiti UniFi, and Sonos costs more but lasts longer and behaves better when something goes wrong at 11 PM. Custom-integrator brands like Lutron RadioRA 3, Crestron, and Savant cost two to four times more than prosumer and are designed to be programmed by a trained installer. The right tier depends on how much the system will actually be used and how angry you get when tech does not work.
Home age and existing wiring. A 2018 build in Banning Lewis Ranch with structured wiring already pulled is a totally different job than a 1962 ranch in Belmont with no neutral wires at the switch boxes. Older homes need adapter switches, sometimes a panel upgrade, occasionally an electrician on site. We have done plenty of work in 1950s Bessemer and East Side Pueblo homes. It is doable. It just costs more, and we tell you why before we start.
Integration depth. Buying a smart thermostat and a smart lock and calling it a smart home is fine, but it is not integration. Real integration means one app, one set of scenes, lighting that talks to the security system, the network running underneath all of it, and a hub that does not fall over when one device goes offline. Integration takes design time and programming time. A unified system across five services costs roughly thirty percent more than buying those same five services as standalone islands. It is also the only version that feels like a smart home.
Ongoing service. Hardware is a one-time cost. Keeping the system working is not. Most installers do not talk about this, which is why most smart homes are broken within two years. Plan on either learning to maintain it yourself, calling someone hourly when things break, or carrying a Care plan. We offer the third option for clients who want it. The cost is real and worth understanding before you sign anything. Skip this conversation and the system will eventually become someone else's problem to fix.
Tier Breakdowns
Bronze, Silver, Gold. Real Numbers.
Bronze: $2,000 to $5,000
This is the entry tier. One service, one room or one focused use case, professionally installed. A typical Bronze project is smart lighting in the living room and main hallway with a Lutron Caseta hub and six switches, plus a smart thermostat with proper integration to your existing HVAC. Total comes in around $2,500 in gear and labor. What is in: the switches, the thermostat, professional install, scene programming, and a working app on your phone. What is out: structured wiring upgrades, network gear, anything outside the room we touched. We assume your home Wi-Fi is good enough to carry the load. If it is not, we will tell you, and that conversation moves you toward Silver. Bronze is honest. It works. It is not a smart home in the integrated sense, but it is a real upgrade and the price reflects that. About a third of our first-time clients start here.
Silver: $8,000 to $15,000
Silver is where the home actually starts feeling smart. Two paths land here. Path one is whole-home single service: full Lutron lighting across the whole house, every switch, every dimmer, scenes for morning and evening and movie night, $11,000 typical. Path two is two or three services in two or three rooms: smart lighting in the main living areas, a four-camera security and camera setup with a UniFi Protect NVR, and a structured wiring or networking upgrade so the whole thing has a real backbone. Silver also covers a proper networking and Wi-Fi rebuild for homes where the existing router was the choke point. What is in: the gear, the install, the programming, basic remote access, and a 90-day post-install support window. What is out: a dedicated theater room, custom millwork around equipment, and any service we did not scope. Most Silver projects take two to four days on site. The majority of our work lands in this tier.
Gold: $20,000 and Up
Gold is the full vision. Whole-home Lutron RadioRA 3 lighting with custom keypads in main living areas. A proper home theater with acoustic treatment, projector, calibrated audio, and dedicated lighting control. Whole-home Sonos audio with outdoor zones. A Ubiquiti UniFi network with multiple access points, a dedicated security gateway, and structured wiring throughout. An eight-camera UniFi Protect setup covering the perimeter. Apple HomeKit or Home Assistant unifying everything so one app and one set of scenes runs the entire house. Custom programming for sunrise, sunset, vacation, and entertainment modes. A typical Gold project lands between $25,000 and $45,000, and ones that include cinema-grade theater, motorized shades across all main living spaces, and Crestron-level integration cross $60,000. What is in: every service we touched, professional commissioning, training for the household, and a year of priority support. What is out: furniture, finish carpentry, structural changes, and your own electrical sub-trade work if a panel upgrade is needed. Gold takes one to three weeks on site depending on scope. It is built to be the way the house works for the next ten years, not the next two. We do roughly six to ten Gold projects a year and we are honest about which homes need this tier and which do not.
By the Service
What Each Service Actually Costs
Smart lighting runs $500 for a single starter room and climbs to $5,000 for a whole-home Lutron Caseta system. Number of zones, switch count, and whether you need a hub or full RadioRA 3 are the main swing factors. Color-tunable bulbs and motorized shade integration push the upper end higher.
Home theater spans $5,000 for a converted bonus room with a projector and a 5.1 system to $30,000 for a dedicated theater with riser seating, acoustic treatment, anamorphic projection, and Dolby Atmos. The room itself usually costs more than the gear. We have built theaters under $8,000 that look and sound great. We have also walked away from a $40,000 ask because the room was too small to justify it.
Whole-home audio sits between $4,000 for a four-zone Sonos setup with in-ceiling speakers and $20,000 for a fully wired distributed audio system with eight or more zones, outdoor speakers, and matrix amplifiers. The single biggest cost driver is whether the speakers are wired or wireless. Wired is more expensive on day one and worth it.
Home automation, the integration layer that ties everything together, runs $3,000 to $15,000 on top of the underlying services. Apple HomeKit and Home Assistant are the cheap, capable end. Crestron and Savant are the expensive end and require ongoing dealer involvement.
Security and cameras cost $2,000 for a four-camera UniFi Protect setup with a small NVR up to $12,000 for an eight to twelve camera system with door access integration, advanced analytics, and a hardened network behind it. Mounting on stucco or older masonry walls adds labor, sometimes a meaningful amount.
Networking and Wi-Fi runs $1,000 for a single UniFi access point with a basic gateway up to $8,000 for a multi-AP setup with structured wiring runs, a 24-port switch, and proper VLAN segmentation. Square footage, wall material, and how many devices the network is actually carrying drive the number. Most homes underestimate this.
Shades and blinds are the surprise. Motorized Lutron shades run $4,000 for a few rooms and $20,000 for whole-home coverage. Hardwired versus battery and the fabric grade picked are the swing factors. Hardwired is cleaner and more expensive.
Outdoor entertainment, meaning patio audio, outdoor TVs, and shade-zone lighting, ranges $3,000 to $15,000 depending on coverage area, weather rating, and whether we are pulling new power or working from existing circuits. A pergola with two outdoor speakers and a TV is a different project than a full backyard zone.
New construction pre-wire prices on a per-square-foot basis at roughly $5 to $15. The low end covers a starter wiring package: two camera locations, a few network drops, and audio in two rooms. The high end covers a fully integrated smart home design ready for day-one move-in. Pre-wire during framing is the cheapest version of every job we do.
Often Missed
The Costs Most Quotes Hide
A network upgrade is the cost most homeowners are blindsided by. Your $99 ISP-rented router cannot carry sixteen smart switches, eight cameras, four audio zones, and a Wi-Fi-connected garage door opener. We see this on almost every Silver and Gold project. Budget $1,500 to $4,000 for a proper UniFi setup if your existing network is the consumer-grade stuff most homes have. Skipping this step is why smart homes feel slow and unreliable.
Structured wiring drops are the second hidden cost. Adding network or speaker cable to a finished home runs $150 to $400 per drop depending on distance, wall material, and whether we can fish through unfinished basement or attic space. Five drops on a retrofit is a real line item. Pre-wire during framing is fifteen to thirty bucks a drop by comparison.
Programming time bills separately at some installers and is folded into the proposal at others. Ours is included in the project price. Watch for a low gear-and-install number followed by a per-hour programming charge after the fact. That is how a $9,000 quote becomes $13,000 at handoff. Ask up front.
Post-install support is the cost nobody talks about. After the install team leaves, who answers the phone when a switch starts blinking red at 9 PM? Some installers charge hourly. Some offer a Care plan. Some are not reachable at all. Worth asking before you sign.
Replacement panels are the small surprise. Smart switches without a neutral wire need either a special no-neutral switch model, which costs more, or a smart bulb workaround. Older Pueblo homes hit this constantly. We catch it during the walkthrough so it is on the proposal, not a surprise on install day.
Payment
How We Bill
We do not offer in-house financing. We are a small Colorado company and we do not pretend to be a lender. What we do is structure the payments so you are never paying for work that has not happened yet. Most projects run on a phased schedule: a deposit at signing to lock the calendar and order gear, a milestone payment at a defined point partway through, and the balance at substantial completion. The exact split depends on scope and is on the proposal you sign. Small projects sometimes bill in full at completion. Large Gold projects sometimes carry a third or fourth milestone.
For ongoing support after install, we offer Care plans through our Home IT division. Same crew, same trucks, but billed as a monthly subscription instead of hourly. The plans cover network monitoring, priority response, and unlimited phone support, which is what most clients actually want once they own a system worth protecting. Pricing and what each tier includes is on our Home IT Care plans page. You do not need a Care plan to be a client. About half our smart home clients pick one up after the first year.
Builder Math
Pre-Wire Is 40 to 60 Percent Cheaper Than Retrofit
If you are building a home in Fountain, El Paso County, or anywhere in our service area, the cheapest version of every smart-home project is the one that happens during framing. Pulling Cat6, speaker cable, and conduit before drywall goes up costs roughly forty to sixty percent less than retrofitting the same wiring into a finished home. There are no fish tape sessions, no patched holes, no surprise asbestos in old plaster. The same $4,000 networking upgrade in a finished home is more like $1,800 if we are on site before the drywall crew. The math gets even more favorable on whole-home audio and structured camera runs.
For builders, pre-wire is the rare upgrade that pays back twice. The buyer gets a higher-functioning home that lists better. The builder gets a differentiator without absorbing material cost since the homeowner pays for the gear directly. We work with several Southern Colorado builders on a per-home basis. Walk through the full scope, timeline, and budget logic on our new construction pre-wire guide, which covers everything from framing-stage wire pulls to final commissioning. If you are planning a custom build and have not had this conversation yet, have it now. Doing it later costs you twice. Pair this with our smart home installation Colorado Springs guide for the full picture.
FAQ
Common Questions
Do you charge for the consultation?
No. The first walkthrough is free and is a real conversation, not a sales pitch. We will look at your house, ask what you actually want the system to do, and give you a written estimate. If we are not the right fit, we will say so.
Will I get a written estimate before any work starts?
Always. Every project gets a line-itemed proposal with the scope, the gear, and the labor laid out. You sign it before we order anything. No verbal handshakes, no surprise invoices halfway through.
Can I phase a smart home project over multiple years?
Yes, and a lot of clients do. We will design the full vision on day one so the wiring, network, and hub choices in phase one do not box you out of phase three. Year one might be lighting and network. Year two adds cameras and audio. Year three brings in shades or a theater. The plan is yours.
Do you require a deposit?
On most projects, yes. We typically collect a deposit when you sign, a milestone payment partway through, and the balance at completion. The exact split is on the proposal. For very small jobs we sometimes bill the whole thing on completion.
What does NOT count toward the project price?
Permits if your jurisdiction requires them, electrical sub-trade work like adding new circuits or replacing a panel, drywall repair beyond standard patching, paint, and any structural changes. We tell you up front when an outside trade is needed and help coordinate it, but their invoice goes directly to you.
Tell Us About Your Home
A free walkthrough, a written estimate, and the actual cost of your project. No pressure, no padding, no follow-up forever.
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