How do you deal with local domains for homeserver services?

I run Technitium + nginx at home so I can hit my services by name instead of IP plus ports. It's been more of a headache than I expected.

I began with .local first, but this does not support subdomains.
Switched to .home, but that's not a real TLD so I can't get real certs, just self-signed. Then Android wouldn't resolve anything until I set Private DNS to "Automatic." Now on Fedora, DNS queries to my server just vanish, don't even leave the NIC, while ping and ssh to the same box work fine. And since .home only resolves through my own server, I had to set the router to use it as the network's DNS. So if the homeserver goes down, my whole network loses DNS.

Feels like whatever I pick I just get a different problem.

How do you all handle this for your homeserver? Local DNS with a fake TLD, real domain pointed at your LAN IPs, something else? Curious what's actually worked without constant fiddling. It feels like the only robust solution is IP plus ports.