10 Smart Home Ideas That Will Do All The Hard Work This Christmas

With the "Fall Back" daylight savings time switch behind us, November is here. And though that technically means Thanksgiving is the next major U.S. holiday, a walk through any Home Depot or Costco is a reminder that Christmas is coming very soon. For those who celebrate, Christmas often means getting together with friends and family, exchanging gifts, and eating huge quantities of food.

However, the holiday can also be quite a bit of hard work, especially if you're on the hook for hosting. There are lights to set up, Christmas trees to water, guests to keep comfy, and, of course, messes to be cleaned. So, to help you ease the struggle of the holiday season, we've curated a list of the best smart home ideas you can apply to Christmas. These gadgets and gizmos each offer a way to help take the load off your shoulders. In all cases, we've presented smart home devices with at least 500 Amazon user ratings that average no less than 4.1 stars.

There was a time when home thermostats required rotating a dial manually to adjust the temperature. Digital control pads are more typical these days, but for maximum assistance around Christmas time, it's worth checking out Ecobee's smart thermostat. It comes with an Energy Star certification and the company claims it can save you up to 26% on heating and cooling costs annually. However, specific applications to Christmas include an automatic temperature adjustment feature that aims to reduce hot or cold spots in a room and help keep guests comfortable.

Should someone forget to shut the door or a window, the Ecobee unit pauses heating and sends you an alert — a nice touch on frigid nights where you might prefer not to heat the outdoors. There's even an integrated smoke alarm, which could be handy should the Christmas ham start burning. This smart thermostat can be voice-controlled via Siri or Alexa, along with dedicated app control, and Ecobee says it's compatible with most 24VAC HVAC systems. At $500, the Ecobee smart thermostat is the most expensive item on our list, but you might be happy with the investment when entertaining a big group on Christmas night. Especially considering it's our pick for the best smart thermostat brand on the market.

Depending on the size of your Christmas gathering and location of the door to your home, there's the potential for a whole lot of locking and unlocking of that entryway to manage folks going in and out. Enter the Ultraloq smart door lock. It replaces your existing door lock with just a screwdriver and 10 minutes of your time, according to Ultraloq, and is said to fit most U.S. standard doors. Once installed, there are many ways to simplify guest access. Share an eKey, give them the passcode, open the Ultraloq app, or simply speak the magic words and let Alexa or Google Assistant manage the deadbolt. Little wonder these fancy locks are one of the best smart home devices of 2025.

Nifty smart home features include automatic locking when the door is closed and auto-unlocking upon approach once your smartphone is detected. Mechanical key backup is included, as is an AI-powered fingerprint access option. A Wi-Fi connection is built in, meaning you don't need a separate hub, as is the case with some smart home gadgets. You can even browse a time-stamped log of entries to confirm any suspicions you may have about Christmas guests who seem to linger.

It's hard to say what's worse, cleaning your home in advance of guests during Christmas or doing the same thing after they're gone. In both cases, there's a good chance you'll be wielding a vacuum cleaner, and the threat of mop-duty is ever-present. Instead, pick up the Tikom G8000 robot vacuum and mop combination. There are many things to consider before buying a robot vacuum, but considering this one is capable of sucking up debris with 5,000 pascals of power and is designed for use on carpet and hard surfaces, it's a good place to start. The integrated dustbin can hold 1.9 cups of stuff and the 1.26-cup water reservoir means the Tikom can mop up its own post-vacuum trail.

If you have kids who are like mine, they will likely forgo all other Christmas gifts in exchange for an intelligent gizmo like this, as it promises to take two chores off their list. Orders can be doled out via remote control, a downloadable app, or by simply barking commands through Alexa or Google Assistant, and the battery should last for 2½ hours. Truly, as the festivities of Christmas inevitably wind down, the possibility of handing off floor cleanup duty to a robot seems worth the $150 purchase price for Tikom's unit.

With Ring's smart video doorbell, you can literally keep an eye on who's coming and going during the holiday season. Between a steady flow of package deliveries and knocks on the door from family and friends, it can get a bit hectic in the lead-up to Christmas. Fortunately, this second-generation doorbell from Ring now offers "head-to-toe" video coverage with the ability to swivel the camera angle side-to-side and zoom in. Installing a Ring doorbell is easy; just screw a bracket into the wall and then snap the unit into place. A built-in battery can be recharged via USB cable, or you can hardwire it for continuous operation.

For maximum Christmastime connectivity, subscribe to Ring Home for package delivery alerts and pair the doorbell with Alexa for notifications via Echo. Colorized night vision and app-based control means you can monitor late-night activity from the comfort of your bed, and the two-walk talk capability seems like it was designed simply to have some fun with folks on the other side of your door. For $100, the Ring smart doorbell would also be a nice holiday gift for the homeowner with a broken traditional doorbell, as it can replace that system with ease.

Of all the heavy lifting at Christmas, watering the tree may be the most physically aggravating. You could, of course, go the fake Christmas tree route and skip this whole section. But for those who simply must have the smell of pine in the house and the mess of pine needles all over the floor, there is only the real thing. This means keeping the tree watered, and doing so requires a bit of acrobatic maneuvering. Down on your hands and knees, an outstretched arm capped by a dangling can of water, aiming for the tree holder, but likely watering the floor at the same time.

The struggle, it is real. So, look to campily named HoHoHoH2O and its automatic Christmas tree watering system for help this holiday season. Disguised to look like a present, it contains a 2½-gallon reservoir for water. Affix the kit's watering sensor to the tree trunk, run the tube from the tank to the tree holder, and switch the whole Rube Goldberg contraption on. A hundred dollars may seem a high price to pay for such a relatively simple task, but ask the person — likely a child — responsible for this work if it's a hassle and chances are, they'll say yes.

On Christmas morning, when you're gorging with eggnog and cookies and surrounded by blankets and torn wrapping paper, the thought of having to go open the blinds might be a bridge too far. Fortunately, SwitchBot makes a variety of affordable smart home devices, including these retro-fittable smart motorized blind contraptions. Clamp the gadget over the blind rod and, well, that's it. An integrated motor does the hard work of spinning that rod and opening or closing the blinds. You can control the motion via app or your favorite digital voice assistant — Siri, Alexa, or Google — though that feature does require buying the Hub Mini kit.

SwitchBot's system has the ability to recharge its batteries via solar power, which translates to as much as eight months of battery life. Other smart touches include an integrated light sensor that can auto-adjust how far the blinds open, in two-degree increments, based on outdoor light intensity. This motorized blind system works only on horizontal blinds, not the vertical or roller variety, but when set up properly, you can put multiple blinds on schedules to simplify this sigh-worthy task during the holidays.

Kasa's smart plug converts boring old dumb plugs into Wi-Fi-connected outlets capable of full smart home integration. These plugs only work with a 2.4 GHz wireless connection, but with it, you can integrate everything from Christmas tree lights and model trains to electric fireplace inserts and TV yule log displays into one smart routine. Compatible with Google Home and Amazon Alexa, you can add as many Kasa smart plugs as you need into one of these apps and create a routine, which is a timed schedule of when the various devices connected to these plugs turn on and off.

So, when your entire extended family comes over for Christmas Eve dinner, you could have all the hard work done at the touch of a button — turn on the lights, fire up the music, switch on the fake fireplace, and so on. There is no separate hub required, and you can simply control each Kasa outlet individually if the whole routine seems too complex. Each one only covers up a single typical outlet, so if you have a double plug face plate, the second one will be available for use. For $30, you get four of these Kasa smart plugs, which come with a two-year warranty and the promise of converting your dumb holiday home into a smart showcase of Christmas connectivity. That said, it's important to be aware of the things you should never use with a smart plug.

Whether you string a single strand of lights across your front door or go full Clark Griswold, hanging Christmas lights can be hard work. So, why not make the most of your effort with these Dazzle smart lights? No, they cannot install themselves, but once you get them up, prepare to be, yup, dazzled. These smart Christmas lights can sync to your music and seemingly come to life with all 16 million available colors blazing. Obviously, you'll be expected to stick with green and red, but once you open the app and see the digital color wheel, you might just expand on those expectations.

Dazzle sells these lights in a variety of lengths, but the least expensive is a 300 LED strand that measures 98 feet long, plus a 16½-foot lead wire, for $30. You can link multiple strands together, or you can step up to the 164-foot long, 2,000-LED option for $55. The lights are outdoor-ready with an IP44 waterproof rating, and the included remote control, or downloadable app, provides access to eight modes, including waves, sequential, chasing, slow fade, and twinkle.

SwitchBot has the market cornered on combination smart-and-dumb home gadgets with its button pusher gizmo. Like most of the smart items here, this doodad can be controlled via smartphone with an app or via your favorite voice control system. However, the resulting action is decidedly analog, some might say dumb, as a little piece of plastic pops out of the SwitchBot box to toggle a switch. The strange term "fingerbot" is also used to describe this particular gizmo, as it is essentially a mechanical finger.

What makes it so useful for Christmas? The fact that it can implement a fully orchestrated digital routine at the last minute. There is no drilling or wiring required with this smart button pusher. Instead, you just stick it to whatever switch you don't want to manually flip. The built-in battery, which should last some 600 days with normal use, moves the finger, and you're done. This makes it the perfect smart home gadget for the holiday procrastinators and those who don't want to pull out any tools. Note that it is designed for rocker switches and one-way buttons, not toggles, and not "overly hard" or "aged" buttons.

Kasa's smart light switch is the complicated version of SwitchBot's fingerbot. It's only $16, or about half the finger contraption, but it's arguably the better solution as it is hardwired into your house. To install it, you'll need to disconnect the existing light switch and connect the Kasa unit to the electrical wiring. It's available in single-pole and dimmer configurations, and requires a 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi connection to work. But there are no batteries required, and you can control it via voice commands, which is nice when your hands are full.

Plus, the Kasa switch delivers two useful Christmas benefits. For one, you can integrate it with an existing routine via Google or Alexa to light up certain rooms on a schedule. But you can also use the built-in Away mode, which will turn lights on and off, randomly, to give the illusion of being home. Ideal for those who go out of town over the holidays. Really, between Kasa's smart light switch and outlets, you could create a wildly complicated smart Christmas routine to rival Kevin from "Home Alone."

To create this list of smart home Christmas gadgets, we sifted through Amazon for items with at least 500 reviews, though in some cases, there are more than 40,000, and an average star rating of at least four. All 10 gadgets were then ordered by price, from most to least expensive.