The wifi does not reach everywhere
It is one of the most common complaints we hear. In the living room it is perfect, but in the back bedroom the film keeps buffering, on the terrace there is nothing at all, and in the office upstairs video calls freeze.
Before you buy the first repeater you see, it is worth understanding why it happens and what your options are. This guide is about homes and small offices: a study, a consulting room, a shop with a handful of workstations. If you run a business with a lot of users, a hotel or a large office, our guide to better wifi coverage for your business is the one you want.
Why there are dead spots
- Distance from the router: the signal weakens with every metre.
- Walls and floors: load-bearing walls, reinforced concrete and concrete floor slabs absorb a great deal of signal. Old stone houses in town centres and houses over several floors are especially awkward.
- Mirrors, fish tanks and appliances: they reflect or soak up the signal.
- Where the router sits: the provider usually leaves it wherever the fibre comes in, often in a corner, on the floor or inside a cupboard.
- Interference: in a block of flats there are dozens of neighbouring networks fighting over the same channels.
Start with the free fixes
Before you spend anything, try this:
- Get the router out of the cupboard and put it up high, in the clear and as central as you can.
- Move it away from the microwave, cordless phone bases and the television.
- Use the 5 GHz band near the router for speed, and leave 2.4 GHz for the far corners, where reach matters more.
- Change the channel if there are a lot of neighbouring networks. Many routers do this automatically, but not always well.
- Restart and update the router.
- Run a cable to anything that stays put and sits nearby: television, games console, desktop computer. That frees up wifi for everything else.
If none of that is enough, it is time to extend the network properly.
The four solutions, compared
| Solution | How it works | Best for | Limitations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wifi repeater | Picks up the router’s signal and rebroadcasts it | A single nearby room with weak coverage | Loses performance; often creates a second network |
| Mesh system | Several nodes forming one single network | Medium and large homes, several floors | If the nodes link by radio they need a good signal between them |
| Powerline with wifi | Carries the connection over the mains wiring | Houses with thick walls the wifi cannot get through | Depends on the state of the electrical installation |
| Wired access point | An AP connected to the router by network cable | Anywhere you can run a cable | Means cabling |
The repeater: the quick fix
A repeater works for a room that sits just at the limit of coverage. It has to go halfway, where the router’s signal is still good, not in the room with no coverage. Put it where there is no signal and it will faithfully repeat a bad signal.
The drawback is that every wireless hop cuts performance, and with several repeaters chained together the network becomes slow and unreliable.
Mesh: one network across the whole house
Mesh systems use two or more nodes that coordinate with each other. Your phone sees a single network and hands over from node to node without you noticing as you move around.
To get the best out of one:
- Place the nodes within reasonable sight of each other, not at opposite ends with three walls in between.
- If you can, link the nodes by cable, a wired backhaul. It is by far the best-performing arrangement.
- Choose wifi 6 equipment or newer. In 2026 that is the sensible baseline.
Powerline: using the sockets you already have
Powerline adapters send data over the electrical wiring. One adapter next to the router, another in the dead spot broadcasting wifi. They work very well in houses with walls the wifi cannot penetrate, as long as the sockets are on the same circuit or consumer unit and the wiring is in good order. Plug them straight into the wall, never into an extension lead.
A wired access point: the most stable option
If you can get a network cable to the dead area, a wired access point gives the best result there is. In many homes you can reuse existing conduit, or run the cable in discreet trunking. In buildings with a recent ICT communal installation there is sometimes data cabling to the bedrooms already.
Typical cases
- A flat in a block, like so many in Tarragona or Reus: moving the router and adding one mesh node or an AP at the far end is usually enough.
- A house over two or three floors on a private estate: mesh with a node per floor, ideally wired.
- A house with a garden or a pool: an outdoor access point for the terrace.
- A small office or consulting room: a wired AP and a separate guest network for clients.
- A holiday let: reliable kit you can manage remotely, because you will not be there when it plays up.
The small office: two extra details
Even in a small office it pays to:
- Keep the working network separate from the guest network.
- Run cables to the fixed workstations and the printer.
- Use WPA3 encryption if the equipment supports it.
When to call an engineer
If you have tried the basics and it still fails, if the house has several floors or thick walls, or if you want access points wired in, an engineer can measure coverage room by room and propose the right combination rather than leaving you to buy one gadget after another.
If you want wifi that works throughout your home or office, have a look at our wifi solutions and ask us for a quote with no obligation.