I'd still think real hard before cutting in bigger boxes than necessary ("necessary" in terms of supporting hard-wired fixtures).
Maybe this is just me, but if I was considering buying a house and discovered that 3 out of the 4 "switches" in a 4-gang box were totally useless to me (as the next occupant), that would be a red flag.
Maybe this is just me, but if I was considering buying a house and discovered that 3 out of the 4 "switches" in a 4-gang box were totally useless to me (as the next occupant), that would be a red flag.
Yeah, I take your point, but if we were going to sell the house and this scenario occurred, it would be 10 minutes work to swap the fascia out for a 1-2 gang unit of the same dimensions and remove the smart modules.
Probably because of this 
I don't think many of these suggestions are going to work well with UK box shapes and sizes, or in the case of hard-wired the voltage differences between UK and USA.
Yup, I know I can do what I want quite easily with a mishmash of switches and remotes but it's really important to me to have a cohesive interior style throughout the house and white plastic isn't going to do that unfortunately...
This is exactly my concern and why I didn't say more in my first post. I may be wrong but i think allot of European contryies use 220V for their regular voltage. Please be careful as it is on joke.
If you are not 100% sure please make sure you leave th electrical to a pro.
Yeah, you're quite right, we're 220-240v here. The question isn't to do with electrical competence though, it's to do with the compatibility of the products and if they're suited to my use case. If you know of dimmer modules which could solve this query I'd be really interested to hear about it! 
I also forgot Lutron isn't available in uk.
Lutron is available here, although it's not terribly commonplace. I've actually sold it to clients in the past 
So in its simplest form all you need for a smart switch is 3 things.
In the US, now the box generally has a Hot and Nuetral wire that comes into the box and then with some limitations all of the switches in that box will connect to the hot wire and the the switch will have a load wire that goes to yor device/outlet/whatever. That will then come back to the electrical box and connect to the Nuetral completing the ciruct. This setup is needed as most smart switches need to have both Neutral and Hot wire connected to them so they have a return path for the small amount of electricity for the Zwave/Zigbee radio. When you use a Smartswitch as a virtual switch you just don't connect the hot wire to a device and the switch knows all of it's updates need to be sent to the hub as events to trigger actions.
The question is can your switch device 1. Be connected without a load device. Not all switches can do that. I killed a Zooz Switch this way. 2. Can you set it to a Smart Bulb Mode. 3. Is it ok in the UK to wire multiple switches into a source Hot and Nuetral this way. Just because it works over here doesn't give me the best feeling it will fly over there.
Did you try reaching out to the folks that make that dimmer module the folks that sold it to you. They may have a option for you.
Actually, yes - I did that about an hour ago and I'm waiting to get their reply. If they happen to be able to suggest a way I can use it without load (possibly adding a resistor in-line) then I'm in business!
As you mention above, there are some differences in the way homes are wired; in the UK it's very unusual to have the neutral in the switch box. My home is no exception, but the dimmer module I've been using (and indeed, all the other smart light-switch modules in use throughout the building) are all no-neutral.
At least for the US Counterparts the switches that support No Nuetral then don't support SmartBulb functionality.
By nature of how they allow a no nuetral smartswitch to work you can't have anything else on that ciruct. Think of it like this a You always have to have a complete circut to allow the electricity to flow. If you don't have Neutrals the general way of doing it is they allow a small amount of power to trickle through the switch. This is just enough to power the switch but not ativate the devices on the circut. If you were to attach another switch to that circut it would never get power to do anything until the prevoius one in the circut was fully powered. No nuetral makes using Smart Switches a bit harder. In my previous post were i said "generally" is because allot of older houses in the US don't have Nuetrals or may even have the hot and Nuetral wire somehwere else in the circut depending on age. If it is allowed by code and you are doing renovations you may want to think about adding nuetrals if it makes this situation better.
Looks to me link this dimmer can bind to other devices. The manufacturer sells dimmer modules/pucks. If you have a 4 gang location with one switch actually connected to load and all 4 are powered off line you should be able to make the 3 that are not connected to loads control remote dimmers.
This is exactly what I'm hoping to achieve. Feels like it should be possible, am just waiting to see if the manufacturer gets back to me with more information and if they or anyone else could suggest exactly how I'd wire it.
What is throwing me is the lack of a nuetral wire. That seems like a big problem. I don't even see how with the wiring diagram in the manual you could have this work at all. Ther eis something missing. Do you have anything showing how it is wired now?
Looks like that device can operate without a neutral.
One of the key advantages of our dimmer modules is that it does not require a neutral wire, making it compatible with any existing UK wiring.
OK so i did a bit more googling for UK Electrical symbols and it seems to work exactly as I suspected.
Here is the Wiring diagram from their documentation for the switch.
So here the Hot wire goes into the switch and then the switch feeds in the US what we call a Load Wire. That feeds your fixture/device/ect. That fixture/device/ect then has a connection to the Nuetral part of the circut to complete it. This means the switch has to allow some amount of power through the circut and to the end device to power itself. To get power to more then one switch with that one set of wires going into the box both wires woud need to be connected each switch. The more blead through that goes to the device the more likely you are to 1 cause damage to that device or just simply cuase unwante resultes with it working unexpected at a very low level even when all switches are off.
Atleast in the US this isn't generally a supported configuration. It will be interesting to see what the manufacture comes back with. I am not saying it couldn't possibly work, just not sure about how well it will
yea, I'm not sure that's correct. That switch in that diagram is still talking zigbee when its not powering the load.
What do you mean by that. Isn't that the point of a smart switch in that it is always on, talking to and listening to the hub so it can do smart stuff.
Please let me know what isn't correct, or suspect?
Well, I think it's best we have the manufacturer solve the issue, but everything I'm reading on the product page and manual says it can work with live wire only.
My point is that it would appear that 3 of the switches in the 4 gang box could potentially only have one wire connected for live and be connected to zigbee and operate.
It's possible we are talking past each other.
Well yes in the uk case it's still black as line (power) and then otherside is load. The neutral is on the other side of the fixture completing the circuit. At least with US switches. Most dimmers can be used with out neutral at the switch whereas on/off switches need neutral connections. Obviously because standard is not to have neutral in the box (as an American I am unsure of the reasoning of this) they have developed on/off smart switches that don't require neutral.
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