I bought a generic N150 based minipc for a firewall & router (running OPNsense), and repurposed an old desktop PC as a server to host immich, paperless, nextcloud, etc… I considered both RPi and mini pc for the server, but I needed a few TB of storage and wanted redundancy. Spinny disks were a much more affordable option than SSDs, and minipcs and Rpis tend to not have much space for those drives. You can add on storage to them, but then they just become clunkier and more expensive than the old PC I already had laying around. Power consumption is probably a few watts higher on the PC than a Pi would be, but it’s not terrible.
That’s why I went the direction I did. I’m 3 about or 4 months in, and it’s been solid so far.
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.