For your overhead lighting with wall switches, Lutron Caseta switches work well. You would replace your original switches with the Caseta switches and then program the remote to operate all the lights together. It has an app you can use with your phone, but can also be programmed and operated without using the app (so no phone necessary). It requires a hub that connects to your router, but once that is done, you can operate it with the remote (which can be hung on the wall like any other switch....and that remote can operate many lights at one time as long as you have replaced your original wall switches with Lutron Caseta switches).

If I'm understanding the question correctly, you can achieve what you want with Insteon switches (and likely others). You can "pair" switches so that they basically talk to each other, without requiring any sort of hub. This capability isn't clearly advertised, because the target market is people setting up larger-scale "smart homes".

The switches aren't cheap (looks to be $50 each at Smarthome.com, but deals can be found. You put one in place of every existing switch. Then the instructions will include the process for "pairing" two or more. Switching one on/off sends a signal to all other paired switches.

There's a caveat with this approach though, it *always* controls all lights. So you've now lost the ability to turn on/off only one specific light. To get back that ability, now you're talking Hub & app.

I do not understand the concept of the new switches/outlets. Our outlets are " hot" on the top and " cold" on the bottom. The cold ones are tied into the wall switch. Alarm clocks are plugged into the top since we obviously want them on all of the time. Lamps are plugged into the bottom and are turned on with the wall switch. They have been like this since we built our house 33 years ago. My parent's house had the same kind of switches.

I do not understand the concept of the new switches/outlets. Our outlets are " hot" on the top and " cold" on the bottom.

That's still not uncommon. The term I've only ever heard is "switched outlet", and they're set up exactly as you describe. In many cases I've seen bedrooms (particularly) with no overhead lights at all, but rather a switched outlet somewhere in the room for a table/floor lamp. Personally I find pros and cons to that approach. I don't think it's common to have 2-way switching with switched outlets though. I suppose it's possible. And in the end the same "smart" switches can still work with switched outlets, but use of dimmer switches may not be wise.

Grapefruit....in a scenario such as yours, a simple solution would be to keep the wall switch in the on position all the time and just use the plugin type remotes instead to switch your lamps on and off (like the Etekcity ones I posted above).

Hi Nidnay. I was not looking for a solution because our system works perfectly for us, We have no overhead lights in our bedrooms ( we built it that way) because we prefer lamplight. We flick the switch and any/all lamps we have chosen to plug into the " cold" outlet come on. We can keep a " manually" operated light in a " hot" outlet close to the bed so that we can turn the lamp on/off without getting out of bed. It never occurred to us to try to make it easier.

I should add that I am not nearly smart enough to operate most new smart devices. I do my best to keep my kids from finding out.