I've had some Hue bulbs and and an LED strip for a bunch of years. It's been pretty reliable. The LED strips are really awesome and frustratingly expensive. You can chain them together to cover longer/larger areas. I've tried a few generic LED strips, and they've kinda sucked by comparison. but sometimes that's ok for a given purpose.

Not that it's what you're asking, but I had a 100 year old house with retrofitted LED can lighting. It's do-able. and might not be as expensive as you think.

As others have mentioned the Philips bulbs are about as good as you can get but they are also the most expensive. And that you can save money by going with the IKEA lineup but the quality isn't as good. But your third option is Innr bulbs which sit perfectly in between Philips and IKEA for quality and price.

TLDR

Philips - best quality / most expensive

Innr - medium quality / middle pricing

IKEA - lowest quality / least expensive

Note: when I say the IKEA is the lowest quality, I just mean between these three. They are still miles ahead of any of the no-name brand crap you can get on Amazon.

I have a mix of normal Hue bulbs and some Innr brand GU10 (spotlight) bulbs. The difference in quality of light from both brands is quite noticeable, with Hue being far and away better in terms of colour blending and accuracy. There's a reason the Hue bulbs are 2-3x the price of the competition

That said, I've had multiple Hue bulbs either outright fail or one LED die so that it still works but the colour is completely wrong. It's frustrating for bulbs that are supposed to last decades but maybe the latest generation are more robust.

They're also regularly on sale for Black Friday and the like, so I'd advise planning your purchases around those events.

I wouldn't worry about leaving them on. Standby power draw is very low and I think even at maximum output they use about 7W each. It's just not a big deal.

Expensive but the color quality is the best on the market.

Wasn't a fan of their hub so I connect the bulbs directly to my ZigBee hub/dongle.

I won't get on too high of a soap box, but strongly considering moving away from Google especially for home automation. Support open source privacy respecting systems and products (or at least products that don't push anti-consumer practices).

I know Phillips doesn't fit that by any means, but any device that supports a local API/ZigBee/z-wave/matter is fine in my book.

you will never be upset with the hue ecosystem… they aren’t cheap, but they’re reliable as hell and have a lot more than just the lights if you ever want to go all in (eg the hue sync - for tv backlighting, light strips, most kinds of lighting fixture you can think of, etc)

oh and the quality of the light itself is top notch, which i think is super important

They work well. They cost more than other options, but (at least in my experience) colours are more consistent and uniform.

Not sure if it's still the case, but the ones I have from a few years ago use Zigbee so you don't actually need their hub - any Zigbee coordinator will do (I'm using a PoE one, the smlight SLZB-06).

Consider using smart switches instead of smart bulbs. However, given how old the house is, you might not have neutral wires at the switches, which limits the types of smart switches you can use. Do you know if the electrical wiring is still original, or if it was redone at some point?

For the power outlets, I'd highly recommend getting an electrican to install more. It's way more convenient than having power strips everywhere.

If you need a bulb or two, Matter/Thread hue is good, just expensive. Otherwise I'd try to wait until January when Ikea is supposed to release all their Matter/Thread stuff.

I have some connected with ZigBee to my Home Assistant. Their new "Essential" line is price competitive with most other smart bulbs you can find and they're working great so far.

I've had the same Hue bulbs for over 7 years now with no issues. The brand itself is very good. As other have said, you can interact with them via Google or Home Assistant directly, and when you're ready you can directly switch them over to Zigbee or something more open if you want to ditch the online services. People here will pressure you to do that immediately, but I think dip your toes in with the official automations, see how you feel, and then see if you want to switch it over. Hue is a great way that will work from app based official all the way down to 6 years from now when you're coding your own automations.

I leave my lamps powered on all the time with hue bulbs and have never had an issue. Even very old lamps have been completely fine. For usability and wife approval I would recommend getting a switch (which is useful for other reasons too) that you can stick on your wall and turn them all off at once. Even if your wife is onboard with automation, a switch will make it mother-in-law proof.

They're the closest light quality to old incandescent bulbs that I've found, but I don't have any of their smart bulbs so can't comment on that part.

I have 16 of the Hue bulbs in my home, all running off a Hue bridge using Home Assistant. This was easy to setup, and basically I haven't had any issues with them in the almost 8 years I've owned them. I have three Hue switches and an android tablet for control of the other lights, and Home Assistant runs off a raspberry Pi.

I don't think I can really help you much though because I bought my setup mostly on sale and haven't had other brands of bulbs or switches.

I will warn that Phillips also sells a whiz brand bulb and this product doesn't run off zigbee and pretty much requires an internet connection to work. Do not be fooled by the cheaper prices.

I recently purchased Kauf bulbs, as they're all locally controlled, which I value. https://kaufha.com/products/

I got into Hue way back in 2014, before I knew what HA was, and before I cared about local control. Hue is OK, and they have a wide variety of form factors to choose from, but I'm always afraid they'll enshitify to the point you can't pair the bulbs with a non hue zigbee controller. I'm pretty sure I can't update the bulbs unless they're connected to a hue bridge.

Using smart bulbs to mitigate the lack of in-wall plugs/switches is a great idea. I do that with my bedroom fan since the light chain is busted.

Hue is excellent from a build quality standpoint but if you value privacy or respect for consumers know that Philips is forcing consumers into a cloud model and changing the terms of service after the fact, for some people well over a decade after purchase.

In general your IOT shit should be isolated to a virtual lan that does not have internet access. As of right now if you buy hue hardware it will do this but eventually this will not work as it will require you to sign in to “Philips security” to activate and utilize lighting (you will need to maintain an active cloud connection.

The bulbs do have zigbee so you can always bypass their bridge of course but this is more complicated to setup and in my experience leads to performance that as not as solid as using the bridge. Also, the ethics of financially supporting a company that will change the TOS after sale to fuck you so they can worsen the product solely to harvest data for sale. Yuck

Expensive but great quality.

I have a few Philips wiz lights and they are reliable. I blocked them from connecting to the internet and I manage them from HomeAssistant. The only issue is that if I have a blackout, they come back all on at 100% brightness. I know there's a setting for "keep the last state" on setup, but I redid it a few times and it never sticks.

I like ThirdReality's zigbee bulbs.

I like Innr. Hue is way too overpriced imo.

I used them mainly for 5+ years, they work pretty well, they definitely don't last forever like most LED bulbs claim.

The biggest problem I ran into was other people, even my wife would still flip switches off which made them kind of pointless.

They work good in lamps but as far as places with obvious switches go, I would get smart switches instead.