Wifi router placement guide

Wifi router placement can be the difference between the speeds your provider promises and the dreaded buffering wheel. Where should you place your wifi router? Our plain-English guide explains where - and what to do if you can't move it.

Your daughter’s video call freezes for the third time in ten minutes. The film buffers just as it gets going. So you restart the router, it behaves for an hour, and then the problems start back up again.

Before you decide that’s just how wifi is, it’s worth looking at where your router actually lives. Moving it can make a surprising difference, and it costs nothing to try.

The short answer: put your router high up, out in the open, and as close to the middle of your home as you can.

Off the floor – a table or shelf, not behind the sofa.

Away from the kitchen, and away from anything metal.

Out of cupboards, cabinets and the understairs nook.

Roughly central to your home, so the signal has less distance to travel in every direction.

Which room should the router be in?

Somewhere central, if you have the choice. A hallway or landing is often ideal, even though it feels like an odd place to put it, because the signal then has a shorter trip to every room rather than a long trip to the far end of the house.

Wi-Fi spreads outwards in all directions, so a router in a back corner is sending half its signal into next door’s garden. Move it towards the middle of the room and you get that half back.

In short: central beats convenient. A hallway shelf usually works better than the corner of the living room.

Should the router be high up or low down?

High up. Routers send their signal outwards — roughly sideways — rather than up and down. Sitting on the floor, that signal runs straight into sofas, skirting boards and cupboard doors, all of which soak it up.

Lift the router onto a table, a shelf or a wall mount, ideally around waist height or higher, and it has a much clearer run through the house. You’ll also be putting it closer to the height of the phones and laptops actually using it.

In short: get it off the floor. Even moving it up onto a side table helps.

Does wi-fi signal go through walls?

It does, but not for free. Every wall a signal passes through takes some of the strength out of it, and some walls take much more than others.

Modern stud partition walls are barely a problem. Solid brick is noticeably worse. Thick stone walls – common in older village properties – are worse still, which is why one room in a cottage can have full signal while the room next door has almost none.

Two things catch people out in extended or converted properties:

Foil-backed insulation, often used in loft conversions and newer extensions, blocks wi-fi very effectively.
Metal-backed plasterboard does much the same thing.

If your signal falls off a cliff the moment you step into one particular part of the house, this is usually why, and it’s a good sign that no amount of shuffling the router around will fix it on its own. More on what to do about that below.

In short: thin walls are fine, thick stone walls aren’t, and foil-lined ones are worse than they look.

Where should you not put your router?

Some of these matter far more than others, so they’re in order.

Big difference:

On the floor – the most common mistake, and the easiest to fix.
Inside a cupboard or cabinet, especially the understairs one where the socket usually is.
Behind or inside anything metal – a filing cabinet, a metal cupboard, the back of a TV unit.
The kitchen – it’s the worst room in the house for this, because of the appliances and all that metal.

Worth knowing, but minor:

Microwaves, which genuinely interfere while they’re running.
Cordless phones and baby monitors, which use similar signals.
Fish tanks and large mirrors – water and reflective surfaces do interfere, though the effect is small.
Right by a window, where a good share of the signal simply heads outside.

Don’t rearrange your living room over the fish tank. Do get the router out of the cupboard.

What if you can’t move it?

Often the socket is where the socket is, and that’s that. You still have options.

Small moves count. Even pulling the router a metre out of a corner, or lifting it onto a shelf above the socket, makes a real difference. You don’t need the perfect spot to see an improvement.
Try running a cable. An ethernet cable from the router to a better position lets you move the wi-fi without moving the connection itself. This can be a tidier option than it sounds – flat cables can be run under carpet edges and along skirting boards.
Consider a mesh system or extender. These put a second unit further into the house so the signal doesn’t have to make the whole journey alone. They’re the usual answer for long properties, thick walls and anywhere with a stubborn dead zone. We’ve explained the difference between a booster, a repeater and an extender if you’re not sure which you need.

How to tell if moving the router helped

It’s worth doing this properly, otherwise you’ll never be sure.

Step one: Before you touch anything, run a speed test on your phone in the room where the signal is worst. Write the number down.
Step two: Move the router, give everything a minute to reconnect, then test again – same room, same phone, same spot.
Step three: Now test your speed standing right next to the router.

The last step is a useful troubleshooting tip. If your internet speed is quick next to the router but slow in the far bedroom, placement is your problem and it’s worth persevering. If it’s slow in both places, something else is going on.

When moving the router won’t help

If your connection is slow everywhere, including standing next to the router, then the limit isn’t your wi-fi but what’s coming into the house in the first place.

This catches a lot of people out, because plenty of homes have been sold “fibre broadband” that only runs on fibre as far as the green cabinet down the road. The last stretch of cable to the house is still the old copper phone line. That’s why speeds slow down in the evening when everyone’s online, and why extreme weather can make it worse.

Full fibre runs all the way to the property, which is why it doesn’t behave that way. If that sounds familiar, it’s worth checking what’s available at your postcode.

Final checklist

Router is off the floor and on a shelf or table
Out of any cupboard or cabinet
Pulled out of the corner, into the open
Nothing metal directly behind or around it
Not in the kitchen
Placed as central in the house as the socket allows
Finally: run a speed test in the slowest room, before and after

Common questions

Does a wi-fi extender actually work? Yes, in the right situation. Extenders are good at filling a specific dead zone. They can’t fix wifi router placement problems on their own, because the extended signal is only as good as what reaches the extender — so it needs to sit somewhere with decent signal already, roughly halfway to the problem area.

Is it bad to leave the router on all the time? No. Routers are built to run continuously, and leaving yours on is better than switching it off nightly. An occasional restart is fine if something seems stuck.

Should the aerials point up or sideways? If your router has aerials you can move, angling one upright and one horizontally tends to give the most even coverage across floors. If they’re built in, there’s nothing to adjust, and your router placement is what matters.

Does it matter if the router is by a window? A bit. Some of the signal will head straight outside rather than into your house. Not a disaster, but a central internal wall is a better bet than a windowsill.

Why is one room always slower, even with full bars? Bars show your signal strength, not your speed. Your devices choose between two signals – one that travels further but carries less, and one that’s faster over shorter distances. In a far-off room you’ll usually be on the slower-but-further one, so it feels sluggish even though the bars look fine.