It’s tempting to tuck your Wi-Fi router behind the couch, under a shelf or even inside a cabinet to keep it out of sight. After all, most routers aren’t exactly designed with aesthetics in mind.
But hiding your router in these spots can seriously interfere with its performance. Obstructing the signal with furniture, walls or enclosed spaces weakens your connection and slows down your internet – especially in rooms farther from the router. If you want fast, reliable Wi-Fi throughout your home, placement matters more than you think.
“The main factor you have to consider is that Wi-Fi travels very well over open air, and it travels very poorly through hard material,” said Julian, a technician with ThoseTechGuys in Renton, Washington. “The best place to put a router is centrally located out in the open away from any cabinets, kitchen, plumbing, walls, things like that.”
In general, you should put your router in a central location in your home where you can see it. The fewer obstructions around the router, the stronger your signal will be. Here’s what not to do when you’re setting up your router.
Read more: Here’s How Much Money I’ve Burned by Renting a Router for Six Years
Error 1: On the floor
Putting your router on the floor won’t completely kill your signal, but you won’t be maximizing it, either. Think of your router like a light bulb. You want it to light up as large of an area as possible. Putting a lamp on the ground will still provide some lighting, but not as much as putting it on a table.
Radio waves typically send their strongest signals downward, so placing your router in an elevated position will maximize your coverage. You can find wall mounts on Amazon, but I wouldn’t recommend them — attaching your router to a wall will block a good chunk of its signal. Instead, try placing it on a table or shelf, ideally with a foot or so of space from the wall.
Error 2: Behind the couch
If you look around the living room for the best place to put your router, the couch might jump out as a convenient hiding place. But this is a bad idea for the same reason you don’t want to put it right against a wall or floor.
“You want to avoid as many hard materials that the Wi-Fi signal has to travel through as possible,” Julian said.
A couch or armchair might not be as oversized of an impediment as a wall, but it will still weaken your Wi-Fi signal.
Error 3: In the basement
Some people dislike the look of their router so much that they stash it in the basement. But that violates one of the fundamental rules of home networking: Put your router where you use it the most — and that’s probably not in the basement. Basements also tend to have a lot of things that can interfere with a Wi-Fi signal.
“There’s also a lot more noise in the basement,” said David Maxey, a senior technician at IT support company NerdsToGo in Bellevue, Washington. “If you have fluorescent lighting, wiring or copper piping in the ground floor, that’s definitely going to have some effect.”
Error 4: Inside cabinets
A cabinet might seem like a clever solution to an unsightly router, but it’s one of the few mistakes you can make that could actually damage your router. In addition to blocking the signal, keeping a router in an enclosed space could cause it to overheat. One woman in Florida recently lost her home in a fire that she says was started by her Wi-Fi router.
That’s an extreme, worst-case scenario. What’s more likely is that your router would degrade over time with inadequate airflow, with occasional periods of complete shutdown.
Error 5: Near another Wi-Fi router
“Wi-Fi operates on its own spectrum of basically radio waves, so any device that broadcasts on the same spectrum is going to interfere with it. That includes other Wi-Fi devices,” Julian told me.
Receiving devices like your TV or smart speaker will not mess with your Wi-Fi, but it will be a problem if you have other equipment like routers or gateways. That doesn’t include mesh systems, which use multiple routers in tandem to spread a Wi-Fi signal throughout the home.
Why would someone have multiple routers if they’re not part of a mesh system? It’s more common than you might think, says Julian.
“People just don’t know. You start with one device, like a router, and then your internet’s not working as well as you want. So then you go buy another device,” Julian says. “It’s just a lack of knowledge that the devices should be in the same family, in the same system.”
Where should you put your router?
The best place to put your router is somewhere you can see it, such as a centrally located room. Ideally, it should be raised at least a few feet off the ground, with some open space between it and any walls or thick pieces of furniture.
That might be unwelcome news for those of us with eyesores for routers, but you can always hide your router inside a wicker basket or plastic crate. Just make sure the container isn’t metal, which can interfere with a Wi-Fi signal.
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