There are lots of debates about smart bulbs vs switches… here and here are a couple discussions. I personally went with wall switches because I wanted to maintain normal usage without having to rely on other controllers like minimotes/phone/echo to turn off lights.
You may need to space some ‘always on’ devices (which repeat z-wave signals out through mesh) throughout the home. For me it has naturally worked out okay on our 2 story+basement home; I’ve got 4 or 5 z-wave switches on the most used lights in the house plus a few plugs, smartstrip and thermostat all help repeat the signals. My garage is the only area I had trouble (with a door sensor) and my quick fix was to put an unused zwave plug in between. It resolved problem, I need to try removing that device again and run z-wave repair because the distance wasn’t that far, maybe another problem was happening???
They advertise 100m/328ft unobstructed distance maximum between z-wave devices, so it seem like this shouldn’t be an issue in most houses unless you have a really long home with one isolated device on the far end. You can buy repeaters as well, but they are too expensive IMO, might as well just buy a z-wave plug/switch for about same cost and plug a lamp into it.
Also, I have decided to use all z-wave devices. To me it makes more sense to have all devices using one protocol to strengthen one mesh… rather than mixing in a second protocol and having two weak meshes.