I came here to suggest a split. Assuming you will be able to position switches in such a way that you can have a strong mesh, on each protocol, this is what I would do with the benefit of hindsight.
As the others have mentioned, I feel this is the best route to take. I ordered and received a dozen of the Blue (2-1) due to being in stock and will patiently wait for the Red’s to become available.
Please correct me if I’m wrong in my switch placement? I installed 4 switches last night and strategically placed them where a Red series will go in between each section. Example: I have a 3 gang closest to my hub, those will be 2 Blue and 1 Red. The next closest switch is a single gang. That I installed Blue. As the gangs get further away from each other I will add them like the first if they are multi gang. If not, and they are single gang I will go Blue and then the next Red and continue this.
Is this the best placement strategy?
SIDE NOTE: And please do not crucify me for saying this BUT I ABSOLUTELY HATE THE SOUND OF THE PADDLE ON THE INOVELLI SWITCH and yes, I have disabled the relay click. Hate is a strong word but seems appropriate for the most expensive paddle on the market. When pressed it actually makes a clicking sound that you get with the cheapest of the cheap paddles. It pains me to say it but Inovelli should have taken a page out of Lutron’s Caseta Diva paddles. They make a very, very slight sound and give great feedback in the form of feel when pressed.
My wife’s first impression last night post install. “WOW”. They look very cool but when she pressed it she said and I quote “they feel very cheap and I don’t care for the loud click”. Ouch, and this coming from an architect.
Sounds like a good approach. Before you go to wild automating things, I would give your mesh a few days to settle. If all of your switches are stable, you’re good to go. If not, you may need to adjust your placement, though this is unlikely to be an issue. I’m sure there are customers out there that start with five switches spread around the house.
As for the click, are you talking about the relay or the paddle? I have some red series and black series switches and dimmers. The dimmers have no clicking sound. I don’t know how these new switches work, but could you put them all in dimmer mode, then if you want them to operate like a switch set the ramp speed to 0?
I would actually keep multi gang using the same protocol. Reasoning would be that you can configure binding for the Blues or association for the Reds to keep them working together if your hub went offline. I paid more attention to my house layout personally than within the same set of lights and tried to spread them around overall.
Invaluable feedback from everyone. Its greatly appreciated.
Question 1: How is a switch affected if its wired in the same gang? The switch Blue or Red wouldn’t know if its in a single or multi gang, correct?
Question 2: Would the question of utilizing Blue versus Red and vice versa change if you had 18 SONOS WIFI speakers throughout the home? I ask because SONOS will dictate the WIFI channel as they are extremely finicky in a mesh WIFI network. Thusly, I might not be able to alter the WIFI channel if it conflicted with the Zigbee network.
- Correct, they wouldn’t know
- If they are using 2.4GHz and you aren’t able to control the channel with all else being equal you’d be better off with zwave to limit interference
You can alter the Zigbee channel
Inovelli switches are the most feature-rich switches on the market. But they are hardly the most expensive. IMHO they are the most bang for the buck.
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SonosNet is based on WiFi channels 1, 6 or 11 and should be selectable as long as 1 device is hardwired. Regardless you can minimize the risk with proper zigbee channel selection.
I apologize, I completely mixed up what you were referring to and was thinking 3/4-ways etc not multi gang…by all means mix them within multi gang, it won’t make a bit of difference 
I’d keep your 3/4-ways the same protocol though for the binding/association reason and avoiding reliance on the hub if something happened.
Solid advice. I’m new to Zigbee, as the Inovelli switches are my first Zigbee devices added to my home. Where can find more info on how to configure my Zigbee network? Can I alter the channels utilized on my Zigbee network?