A security system is only as good as its coverage, and coverage is usually decided in twenty minutes by whoever is holding the box. The default result is a doorbell camera, a camera on the driveway, and sensors on the front and back doors, which leaves most of the actual entry points uncovered.
Placement is free to get right and expensive to fix later, particularly on wired equipment. It is worth thinking about before anything is mounted.
Start With How Entry Actually Happens
Most residential break ins are opportunistic rather than planned. They favor entry points that are quick, quiet, out of sight, and unlocked or easily forced. That points at a handful of specific places.
Front doors are used more often than people expect, because a person walking up to a front door looks normal.
Back and side doors are the classic weak point, since they are usually out of sight from the street and often the least well secured door in the house.
Ground floor windows, particularly at the rear and side of the house, and especially those screened by fencing or planting.
Attached garages, which frequently have a weak interior door into the house and are often left open.
Basement doors and windows, which are commonly older, hidden, and unmonitored.
Sliding patio doors, which have their own vulnerabilities in older hardware.
Sensor Placement
Every exterior door gets a contact sensor. This is the baseline and it includes the door between the garage and the house, the basement walkout, and any door onto a deck. Doors people consider unlikely are exactly the ones worth covering.
Accessible windows get contact sensors. On a two story house that generally means the ground floor plus any window reachable from a porch roof, garage roof, fence, or large tree. Covering every window in the house is usually unnecessary spending.
Glass break sensors cover a room rather than an opening, which makes them efficient in rooms with many windows. They work acoustically and need line of sight within their range, so one well placed sensor in a living room with four windows often beats four contact sensors.
Motion sensors belong in the interior spaces an intruder must cross, not pointed at entry points. The classic placement is a hallway or central stair landing, positioned so that anyone moving between rooms triggers it. Place them in a corner, at recommended mounting height, away from heat sources, direct sunlight, and vents.
If you have pets, look for pet immune motion sensors and check the stated weight tolerance. False alarms are the main reason people stop arming their systems.
Environmental sensors are frequently the most valuable part of a system and get overlooked. Water sensors near the water heater, washing machine, dishwasher, and any basement floor drain. Smoke and carbon monoxide detection tied into the monitored system. Freeze sensors if the house is ever left empty in winter. For most homeowners, a burst supply line is a more likely event than a burglary.
Camera Placement
Cameras do two jobs, deterrence and evidence, and the placement that serves one does not always serve the other.
Front entry. A doorbell camera covers the approach and is the highest value single camera in most homes, if only because it also handles deliveries.
Back and side approaches. These are where cameras are most often missing and most often needed. A camera covering a rear yard or a side gate sees the route people actually take.
Driveway and garage. Covers vehicles and the garage door.
Any secondary entry point not visible from the street.
Mounting height is the common mistake. Too low invites tampering. Too high, and the camera looks down at the tops of heads and produces footage that identifies nobody. Around eight to ten feet, angled to capture faces at the approach rather than directly below, is the usual compromise. Point cameras at the path someone walks along rather than straight down at a door.
Other practical details:
- Avoid pointing into the sun at any time of day, which washes out the image for hours
- Check the night view, since infrared illumination reflects badly off nearby walls, glass, and rain
- Cover the camera's own approach, so that one camera sees the mounting point of another where possible
- Mind the field of view, since a wide angle lens covers more area at lower detail. Two cameras with narrower coverage often beat one wide one.
Where Cameras Are Wasted
- Pointed at a fence or a blank wall with no approach path
- Facing a public street, where they record traffic and generate alerts constantly
- Mounted so high that footage is unusable for identification
- Inside rooms that contain nothing worth watching, which consumes storage and attention
- Multiple cameras covering the same front approach while the rear of the house has none
Motion alerts that fire constantly train you to ignore them, which is the practical failure mode of an overcovered front yard.
Privacy and Legal Points Worth Knowing
Cameras that capture areas beyond your property raise reasonable questions, and rules differ by state and locality.
Audio recording is the area where people most often get into trouble, because many states require consent from all parties to record a conversation. Several camera products record audio by default. Know your state's position and consider turning audio off if you are unsure.
Angle cameras to cover your own property rather than a neighbor's windows or yard. Some jurisdictions and many homeowners associations have specific rules, and a courteous conversation with a neighbor before mounting a camera facing their direction prevents most disputes.
Indoor cameras in shared living spaces are worth discussing with everyone who lives there, and cameras in private areas such as bedrooms and bathrooms should not be installed.
The Things That Matter More Than Equipment
A security system supplements physical security rather than replacing it.
- Solid deadbolts with strike plates fastened with long screws into the framing rather than the jamb. This single change defeats a large share of forced entries.
- A reinforced door between the garage and the house, which is often a hollow interior door with a privacy lock.
- Sliding door security, including a bar in the track and an anti lift measure.
- Exterior lighting on the approaches, ideally motion activated.
- Trimmed planting around ground floor windows, which removes the cover that makes them attractive.
- Visible signage, which is a documented deterrent independent of the system behind it.
Before You Mount Anything
Walk the property at night and approach your own house from the direction a stranger would. It is a quick exercise and it usually reveals one or two obvious gaps that no amount of equipment in the wrong place will close.
Then decide how the system will be monitored, since that changes what happens when a sensor trips. That comparison is in DIY or professionally monitored home security.
If you want quotes for a home security system, tell us about your home and we will connect you with providers serving your area. It is free to use, with no obligation to hire.