Smart Home Vacation Checklist

The goal of a smart home before a trip is simple: make the house look lived-in, let it tell you if something is wrong, and give one trusted person a way in that you can revoke the moment you are back. You do not need to buy everything at once - most of this uses gear you may already own, set up with a little intent. This checklist runs in two parts: what to set up before you leave, and the short list of things worth watching while you are away. Pair it with our new-home smart home checklist if you are still building out the house.

Make the home look lived-in

An empty-looking house is an invitation, and simulated occupancy is the cheapest deterrent you have. Smart plugs and smart bulbs can run on schedules or randomized away routines so a lamp comes on in the evening and off at a plausible bedtime, a different light stirs in the morning, and the pattern shifts a little day to day rather than clicking on at exactly 7:00 every night. A predictable timer is better than a dark house, but a randomized routine is better still because it does not read as automated. Put a plug on a living-room lamp and maybe a radio, a bulb or two upstairs, and let them do the acting.

Do not overdo it. A house with every light blazing all night looks as wrong as a dark one. Aim for the rhythm of a real household - a couple of rooms active in the evening, everything off overnight, a light in the morning. Our smart home automation ideas guide has routines you can adapt for this, and the smart home security automationsguide covers the security-focused ones like "turn everything on if a camera sees someone at night."

Watch the doors and the porch

A video doorbell is the workhorse of a vacation setup because it watches the one spot every visitor and every package passes: the front door. You get an alert and a live view when someone approaches, you can speak to a delivery driver from a beach chair, and the recorded clips give you a record of who came by. Pair it with a camera or two covering the back door or driveway - the entrances a burglar actually prefers, away from the street - and you have eyes on the approaches without staring at your phone all week. Our best video doorbells and best home security cameras roundups rank good options, and where to place security cameras helps you aim them.

Two honest notes. Package theft is the everyday risk on most porches, so if you are expecting deliveries, either pause them, redirect them, or have your sitter collect them - a camera records the theft but does not prevent it. And if you rely on battery cameras or a battery doorbell, charge them fully before you go, because a device that dies mid-trip is worse than none at all.

Arm the alarm and set away mode

If you have a security system, a trip is exactly what it is for - arm it in away mode before you walk out so every door, window and motion sensor is live. Away mode watches the whole house, unlike the home mode you use at night, so this is the setting that earns its keep while you are gone. If you have a professional monitoring plan, confirm it is active and your contact details are current, because a monitored system can request dispatch when you are unreachable on a plane or abroad - just confirm current pricing and coverage before you travel if you are unsure. If you self-monitor, make sure alerts go to a phone you will actually check, and consider adding a second contact who is nearby.

Do a quick walk-test before you leave: arm the system, trip a sensor, and confirm the base station and your phone both react. It takes five minutes and it is the difference between an alarm that works and one you assumed worked. Our best home security systems roundup and how the sensors work guide are worth a read if you are still choosing or fine-tuning a system.

Give your house-sitter a code you can delete

If a sitter, neighbor or family member is checking on the house, feeding a pet or watering plants, a keypad smart lock is far better than a hidden key. Create a dedicated entry code for them, and because it is their code you can see when the door was used and delete the code the moment you are home - no key to get copied or lost. Some locks let you limit a code to certain hours or days, so the sitter's code works during their visits and nowhere else. Our best keypad smart locks roundup covers the options, and the smart locks for Airbnb guide is useful here too, because the guest-code tools hosts use are exactly what you want for a temporary sitter.

Before you go, make sure the lock's batteries are fresh - a lock that dies while your sitter is on the porch is a bad start to the trip - and keep a physical key backup accessible to a trusted person for the rare failure.

The disasters that are not burglars: leaks and temperature

The most common way a vacation goes wrong is not a break-in - it is a burst pipe, a failed water heater, or a heating system that quits in winter. A cheap water-leak sensor placed under the sink, behind the toilet, near the water heater or by the washing machine will text you the moment it detects water, which can be the difference between a mopped floor and a flooded house. A temperature sensor does the same for heat and cold: it warns you if the house drops toward freezing (pipes at risk) or climbs too high, so you or your sitter can act before it becomes damage. These sensors are inexpensive and, for the disaster they catch, easily the highest-value items on this list.

Round it out by unplugging or powering down what you do not need - space heaters, countertop appliances - which cuts a small fire risk and a little standby power. If you are curious how much that standby draw actually is, our how much electricity smart home devices use guide is honest about it. Leave the fridge, your security gear and anything on a schedule running - those are doing a job while you are gone.

Confirm the backups: internet, power and battery

Here is the honest caveat that runs under this whole checklist: most of it needs the internet. Live camera views, alerts, remote lock codes and app control generally stop working if your home loses Wi-Fi, and if a monitored alarm loses both broadband and power it depends on a cellular backup to keep calling out. Before you leave, confirm the things that keep working when the connection or power drops. A good alarm base station has a battery and cellular backup; some cameras keep recording to a local card even offline; a keypad lock still opens by code without Wi-Fi. Our do smart home devices work without internet and smart home during a power outage guides spell out exactly what survives each kind of outage.

Battery upkeep is the other quiet failure. Every wire-free device - battery cameras, a battery doorbell, sensors, the lock - runs down over time, and the worst moment to discover a dead one is while you are a thousand miles away. Charge or replace anything that is getting low a day or two before you leave, not on your way out the door, and check the app for low-battery warnings across all your devices as the last step before you lock up.

The short version

Before you leave: set lights and plugs on randomized away routines, charge every battery device, arm the alarm in away mode and walk-test it, create and confirm a sitter code you can later delete, place leak and temperature sensors, and confirm your camera and doorbell alerts go to a phone you will check. While you are away: keep an eye on doorbell and camera alerts, respond to any leak or temperature warning fast, and handle deliveries so packages are not sitting on the porch. Do those and the house looks lived-in, tells you if something is wrong, and hands one trusted person a way in you control - which is about all you can ask of a smart home while you are on a beach somewhere.

The honest caveat, the same on every page here: we did not lab-test this setup on a real trip for this guide. The points above come from reading manufacturer documentation and product listings on August 1, 2026, and thinking through a sensible vacation routine - not from our own testing. Where a judgment would need hands-on time, we say so; the full method is on the methodology page.