Router on the floor or on a shelf: does height matter?

Moving a router from the floor to the top of a bookcase costs nothing and often helps more than a new gadget. Here's why, and how high to go.

Published · 2 min read

In this guide
  1. Why the floor is a bad place
  2. How high is high enough?
  3. What about ceiling mounts?
  4. Height doesn't replace position
  5. Check what the move did

Routers end up on the floor more often than you'd think: next to the wall socket, behind the TV stand, under a desk. Lifting one onto a high shelf is free, takes a minute, and is one of the few Wi-Fi tips that almost always helps.

Why the floor is a bad place

  • Half the signal goes into the floor. A router radiates in all directions. On the floor, a large share of it heads straight into tiles, concrete and whatever is underneath.
  • Everything at floor level is in the way. Sofas, beds, cupboards, the kitchen island, even people sitting down: most of the stuff in a room lives between the floor and waist height.
  • The antennas' best direction is sideways. Typical router antennas send most of their energy outward, in a flattened ring. On the floor, that ring runs along the floor, through furniture legs and skirting boards.

How high is high enough?

  • Chest height or above is a good minimum on the floor where you spend your time.
  • The top of a tall bookcase or cabinet is often the best spot in the room.
  • In a two-story house, high on the ground floor helps the upper floor too, because the router is closer to the ceiling it has to cross. See where to put the router in a two-story house.
  • Wall-mounted near the ceiling works well if the router has mounting holes.

There's rarely a "too high" in a single-floor home. The exception is when the router sits so close to the ceiling on the top floor that it sends a lot of its signal into the roof space.

What about ceiling mounts?

Access points designed for the ceiling, the flat round ones, are built to radiate downward and outward. They work very well on the ceiling. A regular router is not designed for that orientation; mounting it upside down on the ceiling usually makes its coverage worse, not better.

Height doesn't replace position

A router high up in the corner of the house is still in the corner. Lift it, but also get it as close to the middle of the home as the cable allows, and out of cabinets. See router in a cabinet and where to put your router.

Check what the move did

Lifting the router is a perfect first experiment because it's free and reversible. Use the method in how to test Wi-Fi before and after: same spots, same phone, before and after. With WiFi Heatmap you map the home with the router on the floor, lift it, map again, and see which rooms moved.