Most people blame slow internet on their plan. The speed is not high enough. The provider must be cutting corners. Something must be wrong outside the house. I thought the same when we moved into our new home. On paper, our new service was faster than what we had before, yet day-to-day it often felt slower.
The problem became impossible to ignore once I started working from my garden room office. The office sits more than 10 metres from the house and roughly 20 metres from the Wi-Fi router, which was positioned at the very front of the house. Video calls dropped, files took ages to upload, and even basic browsing felt unreliable.
We soon learned that the real problem was much closer, and much easier to fix, than we originally thought.
There is one common home setup mistake that quietly drags internet performance down, even on fast plans. It does not look dramatic, it does not trigger error messages, and it often goes unnoticed for years. Yet it is responsible for countless buffering screens, frozen video calls, and patchy connections.
Before I got carried away switching plans or comparing internet providers in my area, I’m glad I explored other areas to fully understand this issue, because no plan can fully overcome it.
Table of Contents
- The Mistake: Treating Router Placement as an Afterthought
- Why This One Choice Has Such a Big Impact
- Why Speed Tests Can Be Misleading
- What Good Router Placement Actually Looks Like
- The Problem Gets Worse in Modern Homes
- When Moving the Router Isn’t Enough
- How This Mistake Leads People to Overpay
- A Simple Way to Check Your Setup
- Small Change, Big Difference
The Mistake: Treating Router Placement as an Afterthought
The single biggest mistake people make is placing their router wherever it’s convenient, not where it works best. My wife hates the look of tech and equipment, so it’s normally put somewhere out of sight. And it’s the same for many others. Routers often end up:
- In cupboards or cabinets
- Tucked behind TVs or furniture
- On the floor or in a corner of the house
- Near large appliances or metal objects
These spots make sense aesthetically or practically, but they’re terrible for signal strength.
Wi-Fi signals don’t like obstacles. Walls, floors, metal, and even water pipes weaken them. The further the signal has to travel through these barriers, the worse your connection becomes.
Why This One Choice Has Such a Big Impact
Your internet connection enters the house at one point, but Wi-Fi has to carry it everywhere else. If the router starts from a bad position, every device is working with a weaker signal from the outset.
This leads to:
- Slower speeds the further you move from the router
- Inconsistent performance between rooms
- Dropouts during video calls or streaming
- Devices constantly reconnecting
One particular issue I came across was having a good internal connection in my garden room office. It’s where I spend most of my time working, and I needed the best connection possible.
Why Speed Tests Can Be Misleading
This mistake is often masked by speed tests.
If you run a test standing next to the router, results may look great. That creates a false sense of security. The plan seems fine, so the issue must be something else.
But speed drops sharply with distance and interference. The bedroom, home office, or living room where you actually use the internet may be getting a very different experience.
What Good Router Placement Actually Looks Like
You don’t need a technical background to improve this. Good placement follows a few simple principles.
A well-positioned router is:
- Centrally located in the home
- Raised off the floor
- Out in the open, not enclosed
- Away from thick walls and large metal objects
Think of Wi-Fi like light from a lamp. If you hide it in a cupboard, the room stays dim. Put it in the middle, and everything improves.
The Problem Gets Worse in Modern Homes
This mistake is more damaging today than it was years ago.
Homes now have:
- More devices connected at once
- Higher expectations for streaming and calls
- Smart TVs, cameras, speakers, and appliances
Each device adds load, and poor signal strength amplifies the strain. What once felt like a minor inconvenience now becomes a daily frustration.
When Moving the Router Isn’t Enough
In some homes, layout makes perfect placement difficult. Multi-storey houses, thick walls, or long floor plans can still cause weak spots. In our house, we had real issues getting a good signal in the master bedroom and the garden office.
The master bedroom was the furthest point from the router and had a thick dual-layer wall in between. The garden office was athe back of the garden, where the router was at the front of the house.
If moving the router helps but doesn’t fully solve the issue, other options include:
- Mesh Wi-Fi systems to extend coverage
- Wi-Fi extenders for specific rooms
- Wired connections for fixed devices like TVs or desktop computers
These solutions work best after the router is placed as well as possible. We ended up installing a mesh system that boosted the Wi-Fi signal much further. It was like a hopping point for the signal to increase the coverage. Thankfully, this worked and provided coverage across our whole estate.
How This Mistake Leads People to Overpay
Poor Wi-Fi often gets misdiagnosed as “not enough speed”.
People upgrade plans hoping for relief, but the experience barely changes. The signal issue remains, so the extra speed never reaches the devices that need it.
This is how households end up paying for more internet than they can realistically use.
Fixing the setup first helps you understand whether a faster plan is actually necessary — or if better coverage solves the problem on its own.
A Simple Way to Check Your Setup
You can spot this issue without any tools or apps. Ask yourself whether the internet works best only near the router, whether certain rooms always struggle, and whether the router is hidden or enclosed.
If the answer is yes, placement is likely holding you back. A short experiment of moving the router temporarily and testing again can be surprisingly revealing.
Small Change, Big Difference
This one setup choice does not get much attention, but it quietly shapes your entire internet experience.
Before changing plans, replacing equipment, or getting frustrated, look at where your router sits. Improving its position costs nothing, takes only minutes, and often delivers an immediate improvement.
When your home setup works with your connection instead of against it, internet speed stops feeling like a mystery and starts feeling reliable again.
