Before you upgrade your plan, upgrade your router's address. Wi-Fi is radio, and radio obeys physics: distance, obstacles and interference all eat signal. Moving a router from a cupboard in the corner of the house to an open, central, elevated spot is the cheapest meaningful speed upgrade most homes will ever make — and it's free.
The golden rules of placement
- Central, not convenient. Routers usually live wherever the line enters the house — a hallway corner or a lounge skirting board. But Wi-Fi radiates roughly outward in all directions, so a corner placement wastes half your coverage on the garden. As close to the centre of your home as the cabling allows is the goal.
- Elevated. On a shelf or sideboard, not the floor. Floors, furniture and people absorb signal; a metre or so of height noticeably improves coverage on the same level and the floor above.
- In the open. Not inside a TV cabinet, not behind the sofa, not in the “tidy box”. Enclosing a router in wood or metal is the single most common self-inflicted Wi-Fi wound.
- Away from the kitchen. Microwave ovens operate at 2.4 GHz — the same band as half your Wi-Fi — and a running microwave can visibly stutter video on nearby 2.4 GHz devices.
What actually blocks Wi-Fi
Not all walls are equal. Plasterboard barely registers; brick takes a real bite; and a few household items are surprisingly hostile:
- Masonry, concrete and stone — the classic signal killers, especially for 5 GHz.
- Metal — radiators, fridges, foil-backed insulation and metal shelving reflect signal rather than passing it.
- Water — absorbs 2.4 GHz energy readily. A large fish tank between router and sofa is genuinely a Wi-Fi obstacle, and so, in effect, is a room full of people.
- Underfloor heating and tiled floors — one reason signal between storeys is often worse than signal across the same floor.
2.4 GHz vs 5 GHz: the trade-off
Modern routers broadcast both bands, and they behave differently. 2.4 GHz travels further and penetrates walls better, but it's slower and shared with microwaves, Bluetooth, baby monitors and every neighbour's network. 5 GHz is much faster and cleaner, but fades faster with distance and obstacles.
Practical rule
Devices that need performance (TVs, consoles, work laptops) should be on 5 GHz and ideally within a wall or two of the router. Far-flung, low-demand devices (smart plugs, doorbells) are fine on 2.4 GHz. If your router merges both bands under one name, it will usually steer devices sensibly — but a sticky device clinging to 2.4 GHz in the same room as the router is worth forcing onto 5 GHz manually.
Mesh vs extenders
If good placement still leaves dead zones, you have two options. Cheap Wi-Fi extenders rebroadcast the signal and typically halve throughput in the process, often creating a separate network name your phone clings to long after you've walked away from it. Mesh systems cost more but use dedicated links between nodes and hand devices over seamlessly — for whole-home coverage they're worth the difference. One caveat for competitive gamers: every wireless hop adds latency and jitter, so for a gaming PC a cable still beats any mesh — see our Ethernet vs Wi-Fi comparison.
Prove the improvement: re-test
Placement tweaks should be measured, not vibes-checked. The method:
- Run a NetStartr test in your two or three most-used spots and note download, upload and jitter for each.
- Move the router (or change one variable — height, room, band).
- Re-test from the same spots, same device.
- Keep the change if the numbers improve; revert if they don't.
It's common to see the far end of a house double its speed from a single sensible move. And if even a perfectly placed router can't reach a room, that's your sign to look at mesh, a powerline adapter or a cable run — more on the wired options in our wired vs wireless guide. If wired speeds at the router itself are below your plan, the problem isn't placement at all — check our ISP guides instead.