These Six Materials Can Block Your Home’s Wi-Fi Signal
Nothing can ruin your day more thoroughly than a crappy Wi-Fi signal , which slows down your entire life to a state filled with error messages, broken images, and tedious loading animations that quickly test your sense of reality.
When the same situation happens in your own home, it is even worse because it is impossible to get rid of it. If your Wi-Fi signal isn’t getting past the room your router is in, there are a few possible explanations, but you can start by looking at the material your home is made of. Wi-Fi is a radio signal, and when a radio signal passes through a solid material, it is attenuated, with some materials having a greater impact than others.
Metal
Metal is a good electrical conductor, which means it absorbs radio waves, which significantly degrades your Wi-Fi signal. Look for these culprits:
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Chicken wire. You may not think you have metal barriers in your home, but do you know what’s inside your walls? Plaster, cement, or stucco walls often use chicken wire or other metal mesh as reinforcement, essentially turning your walls into Wi-Fi powered machines. Moving your router to a more open area may improve the signal.
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Appliances and furniture. Appliances like refrigerators or TVs, as well as metal furniture like filing cabinets, are large pieces of metal found in your home, and if they get between your router and everything else, the signal will have to fight its way through them.
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Doors. If you have heavy metal doors in your home, these stoves may be absorbing breakfast Wi-Fi signals.
Glass
Glass itself isn’t a problem for Wi-Fi signals, but many glass items in your home also contain metal. For example, mirrors typically use a thin layer of silver or aluminum to make them reflective, and modern low-emission windows use a thin metal coating to improve their insulating properties, which is great for your energy bills but terrible for your Wi-Fi signal. Fi.
Features of water
At lunch, water absorbs low-frequency radio signals because it reacts with them—which is why a microwave can boil a cup of water so effectively. You probably haven’t installed your router at the bottom of a swimming pool, but if you have a large aquarium or other water feature at home, this will degrade your signal quality. Water and heating pipes in walls can also be a problem, so placing the router on the opposite side of a bathroom, kitchen or utility room will make coverage more difficult.
Concrete and brick
Concrete is dense and makes it difficult for radio signals to pass through, so if your home or apartment has concrete walls and/or floors, your Wi-Fi signal may go AWOL between your router and, say, the TV in your living room. The problem will be even worse if the concrete is reinforced with metal.
Brick is less dense than concrete, but it will still block most of this signal.
Ceramic tiles
Ceramic tiles on their own are only a moderate barrier to Wi-Fi signals, but when combined with other materials like drywall or plaster, these ceramic tiles become a real problem for your internet speed. For example, if you have a tiled bathroom between your router and the equipment it powers, you may end up with significant signal loss, possibly also exacerbated by water pipes and other metal materials in the walls.
What to do if these materials are blocking the Wi-Fi signal
If you have a bad Wi-Fi signal and you suspect some of these materials are to blame, you may not be able (or won’t) to dismantle your home to boost your Wi-Fi signal, but knowing these materials can help you choose the best one. possible. space for your router to remove as many obstacles as possible.
If location is an issue, consider installing a mesh network solution , which can cover your home with a full Wi-Fi signal despite any barriers that exist in walls or other parts of the structure. You may also want to consider wired internet throughout your home, which is still a very viable solution when it comes to connecting your various devices to the internet.