Where should you actually put your CCTV cameras?

Camera placement, not camera quality, is what determines whether CCTV footage is actually useful: a basic camera covering the right spot correctly beats a 4K camera pointed at the wrong angle, mounted too high, or aimed into direct sun for half the day. Most of the CCTV complaints we get called out for, 'the footage was useless,' 'we couldn't see who it was,' trace back to placement decisions made when the system was first installed, not to the hardware itself.

Start with entry points, not corners

Front door, back door, and any ground-floor windows or balconies should be covered first. These are the points an intruder would actually use, and they're also where footage is most useful for identifying a delivery, visitor, or incident. A common mistake is prioritizing 'coverage' in the sense of seeing as much of the property as possible, wide driveway shots, a corner overlooking the whole garden, over actually covering the handful of points someone would realistically use to get in or interact with the home.

A useful way to plan this: walk your own property as if you were a delivery driver, then as if you were trying to get in without being seen. The first walk tells you where a doorbell or entry camera earns its place. The second tells you where the actual blind spots are, side gates, a low garden wall, a back window out of view from the street.

Height and angle matter as much as position

Cameras mounted too high mostly capture the tops of heads, which is nearly useless for identification, a very common mistake when cameras are placed for maximum reach or to avoid tampering rather than for usable footage. We typically mount cameras at 2.4-2.7 meters, angled slightly downward, which keeps them out of easy reach while still capturing usable faces at a natural angle rather than a bird's-eye view.

Angle relative to a doorway matters too. A camera mounted directly above a door looking straight down captures the top of someone's head as they approach and almost nothing useful. Offsetting the camera slightly to the side, so it captures an approaching face rather than a descending scalp, is a small positioning choice that makes a large difference to whether footage is actually identifiable.

Don't forget lighting

Even a good camera struggles in poor lighting. We check existing outdoor lighting during installation and recommend color night vision cameras for areas that stay dark, so footage stays usable after sunset. A camera aimed directly at a bright light source, a porch light, a neighbor's floodlight, a streetlamp, also has the opposite problem: the bright spot overexposes and everything else in frame goes dark or washes out. Positioning matters as much for avoiding bad light as it does for getting good light.

Cover the direction people actually arrive from

For villas, this usually means the driveway and front walkway more than the garden itself, since that's the path any visitor, expected or not, actually takes. For apartments with a single door, this is more straightforward, but it's worth checking whether a shared corridor camera (if your building allows one) or a doorbell camera at your own door better serves what you actually want to know: who's outside your specific unit.

Common placement mistakes we see on existing systems

Cameras aimed at a neighbor's property instead of your own boundary, which is both a privacy problem and often not the coverage you actually intended. Cameras mounted under an eave that also shelters a wasp nest or bird's nest within months, obstructing the lens without anyone noticing until footage is needed. Cameras covering a driveway but missing the pedestrian gate right next to it, the point someone on foot would actually use.

What we check on a placement visit

We walk the full property, identify genuine entry points versus 'nice to see' areas, check existing and available lighting at each proposed position, and test camera angle and height on-site rather than mounting based on a generic plan. For homes upgrading an existing system, we also review current footage with you to identify exactly where past coverage has actually failed, that's often more useful than starting from a blank slate.