If you're running individual THHN wiring in conduit, daisy chaining the neutrals is feasible. If you're running Romex, daisy chaining is a pain, so home runs back to the breaker panel is easier.

Thanks for your feedback!

I'm an expert in several fields -- not electrical work -- but something that is relatable is that when you ask a professional to do something you shouldn't micromanage or dictate how they do it. You should trust them to make a good decision based on your desired end goal. Your end goal should not be about the details of the wiring but simply how many lights and whether you can turn them on/off. If you don't trust the electrician than either he's the wrong electrician or you're the wrong customer. That all said, personally, I would not want a situation where if I need to upgrade/do emergency fixes to the lights all of the lights in my home have to be switched off at the same time. That's inconvenient if it's dusk or later outside. I also wouldn't want a setup that is so different that anyone who works on it is going to charge me a lot more just to work on things. My 2 cents.

​@Jake The Wonderdog.  Interesting feedback.  My thought process was exactly like yours.  The electrician was the one with the daisy chain thought.  I don't pretend I know more then I do, but as an automation engineer, my suggestion just made more sense

"I don't pretend I know more then I do, but as an automation engineer, my suggestion just made more sense"

I live in an area (Silicon Valley) with a higher population density of engineers than there are in most places. I'm not an engineer myself. Among friends and acquaintances I've known over the years have been therefore a higher percentage of engineers than many others would have experienced in such a group. A common habit I've seen among engineers is the practice of trying to "figure out" things far afield of their areas of education and professional expertise. It seems to be a capability they think they have because, after all, they're engineers. They too often will convince themselves that their assessments must be correct and others (even experts who disagree with them) are wrong because how they've analyzed the situation "makes sense". In such cases they're wrong more often than not.

I would never want all the neutrals run back, that sounds like a future nightmare.

My husband is an electrical engineer (and has spent time in Silicon Valley) and the son of an electrician. He is allowed to do basic things…Replace light fixtures, move an outlet….replace a frayed cord on an appliance…and he is handy to consult when I, the layperson, thinks they are being bull p00ped by a pro. But he is well aware that he has no knowledge of current codes, and he does not touch anything over 110V.

"he is well aware that he has no knowledge....."

Current building codes are well beyond the concern and hijinks of what some engineers I've known were up to. So too common sense:

-one guy, a mechanical engineer but blessed with knowledge of every little thing in the universe, decided he could save electricity by routing all the major appliances in his house to his PC, on which he could write a program to control them individually. He never realized that the power supply of a PC can't run a fridge, an electric dryer, or a TV individually, much less, more than one at a time. So he needed to add increasingly larger power supplies to the PC because he kept burning them out. The PC finally caught fire one day, the fire department was called, and his wife put a stop to his home automation work. Even I know that the work should have been done with low wattage relays to switch the power on and off, not by trying to have power cords run to and be controlled by a PC.

-another, an electrical engineer, was excited to be taking a trip to Lake Tahoe to go skiing. A new experience for him. His wife signed him up in advance for 2 days of ski lessons. In advance of the trip, he set himself to drawing diagrams of hillsides, gravity, forces and the like, to figure out how a human wearing skis would be affected and whether any of the forces could be controlled by shifting his weight. He got it all figured out before leaving. Once there, he was dismayed that his instructor was grossly misinformed and, for instance, suggested he lean uphill at times when his analysis suggested he should be leaning downhill. He quit the lesson at lunchtime, figuring he was wasting his time. He went out on his own after lunch to perfect the techniques his analyses had suggested and he spent the afternoon (according to his wife) falling down, getting up, falling down, rinse and repeat. They drove home the next day and he hasn't gone skiing ever again.

True Stories. I have more.

@Elmer J Fudd

That's a great story! I've seen the same syndrome with architects. There is an old joke, "Do you know why architects go to hell? Because Jesus was a carpenter".

Again, common neutral is a thing and permissible. Most residential wiring is done with cable though rather than individual conductors in conduit. Bringing them all back to a common box makes the most sense. It also makes it possible to make changes / repairs. Can you imagine half of the lights in the house don't work and trying to find an open neutral that could be virtually ANYWHERE. It would be worse than the string of Christmas lights.

BTW: The entire idea seems like a really bad idea - another reason to make a home run with the neutral. I can just imagine trying to unload this house at some point in the future. At least if you run both the hot and neutral back to a common panel you can un-do all the automation.

Potential clients who are engineers never fail to let me know that they are engineers immediatly. As if that is supposed to have some meaning to me? They may as well tell me the breed of their dog. I appreciate it though, because they go on double secret probation faster than lawyer clients.

Both options have their pros and cons. Option 1, daisy chaining neutrals, can simplify wiring but might be harder to troubleshoot if something goes wrong. Option 2, running each wire individually, offers better control and isolation but can be more complex. It’s important to consider your specific needs and how you’ll manage the system.