The Home Camera Placement Guide

Why placement beats device count

Ask ten homeowners how to make a house more secure and nine will say “add cameras.” Yet the homes we assess with the worst coverage are rarely short on cameras — they’re short on geometry. A camera protects nothing by existing; it protects the volume of space inside its cone of view, at the times its motion logic is actually watching. Three cameras placed on real approach routes routinely out-perform six pointed at lawns, streets, and each other.

This guide covers the placement method we use in every camera placement plan: the geometry, the five zones that matter, the mistakes we fix most often, and the settings that stop false alarms. If you’d rather have it done for your exact floor plan, that’s what our virtual security audit is for.

The geometry of coverage

Height: 2.4–2.7 metres

High enough to resist tampering and see over obstacles; low enough that faces — not scalps — are what gets recorded. Above 3m, identification quality drops sharply and every subject becomes a bird’s-eye silhouette.

Angle: cover the approach, not the spot

Aim along the path an intruder must travel, not at the single point you care about. A camera aimed down at a door sees the top of a head for half a second. A camera watching the walkway that leads to the door sees a face for six seconds. Depth of approach is recording time.

Cones, not circles

Every camera sees a wedge — typically 90–110 degrees. Sketch your floor plan, draw the wedge for each proposed position, and look at what’s left white. That white space is your real security posture. Corners of buildings are placement gold: one camera, two walls, one cone covering both.

The five zones every home must cover

1. Front entry. The most-used entry in break-in data. A doorbell camera plus an elevated camera watching the walkway approach beats either alone.

2. The garage. The most forgotten entry — and often connected directly to the house. Cover the vehicle door’s exterior approach and, ideally, the interior door with a contact sensor.

3. The rear. Lowest natural surveillance, favourite professional approach. A floodlight camera facing the fence line covers most rear geometries.

4. Side passages and gates. Narrow, dark, and invisible from the street — a single well-angled camera down the passage owns the whole route.

5. Ground-floor glass. Second most common entry route. Cameras help, but glass-break or contact sensors are the honest answer here.

The mistakes we fix most often

• The lawn camera — a beautiful view of grass, while the entry sits just outside the cone.
• The street watcher — tuned to record every passing car until its alerts get muted forever.
• The backlit doorway — facing a bright window all day, recording silhouettes.
• Camera clustering — three devices covering one photogenic angle, zero covering the garage.
• The WiFi cliff — a perfect position with one bar of signal, dropping frames precisely when it matters.

Motion zones: where alerts are won and lost

False alarms are a design failure. Draw detection zones over the approaches a human must use — walkway, driveway apron, fence line — and explicitly exclude the street, the neighbour’s drive, and vegetation that moves in wind. On cameras with person detection, use it; on cameras without, tighten zones until a car two houses away can’t wake you at 3am. An alert feed you trust is worth more than a camera you own.

Night vision and lighting

Infrared range figures on the box assume open air and no obstructions. Test at night, from the mounted position, before you commit to screws. Pair rear and side cameras with motion-activated lighting: light is a deterrent, and every camera records dramatically better in it. Avoid pointing IR cameras at reflective surfaces — windows, white walls, vehicles — which bounce the IR back and blind the sensor.

Wired or wireless?

Wireless cameras go where drills can’t and renters live; wired (PoE) cameras never run out of battery mid-incident and never drop off congested WiFi. Our rule: wired for fixed, critical positions when the building allows it; wireless for reach, rentals, and rapid deployment. Whatever you choose, the position comes first — buy the camera that fits the position, never the reverse.

The 10-point placement checklist

1. Every entry point sits inside at least one coverage cone
2. Cameras mounted 2.4–2.7m, faces recordable at approach
3. Approaches covered lengthwise, not spot-watched
4. Corners used to double coverage per device
5. No camera facing a bright window or reflective surface
6. Motion zones exclude streets, neighbours, and foliage
7. Night performance tested from the actual mount point
8. Motion lighting on rear and side approaches
9. Signal strength verified at every wireless position
10. One monthly check: lenses clean, angles true, alerts meaningful

Want this done for your exact home, with positions, heights, and angles on your floor plan? That’s our Camera Placement Planning service — or start with a virtual assessment.