How Many CCTV Cameras Do You Need for Your Home?

If you are planning to install a new home security system, you will need to determine how many CCTV cameras are required to monitor the whole property. Even if you are not aiming for complete coverage at first, your long-term goal should be to have enough security cameras to cover all potential access points in your home. In our experience, if you want to avoid future upgrade issues, it’s essential to figure out what the magic number is at the planning stage. To help you get started on this crucial task, we’re discussing how many security cameras are typically needed for a medium-sized home and what special considerations you need to be aware of when making your calculations.

Assessing Your Surveillance Needs.

When determining how many CCTV cameras are required to protect your home, think about the most vulnerable areas and ensure that, whatever else you achieve, all of them are covered by your new security system. Vulnerable areas that should be monitored 24 hours a day include:

• All Exterior Doors

• Driveway

• Windows

• Garage

• Shed
• Backyard/Garden Gate

There may be other areas specific to your home, such as a front porch or rear patio area, which should also be monitored by security cameras if possible. An easy way to make sure that no important areas are missed is to consider the interior and exterior of your property separately:

• Indoor Cameras – While indoor cameras are far less commonly deployed, some properties may benefit from installing one or more cameras in interior locations. Garages, storerooms and workshops are all examples of indoor areas that can be made more secure with CCTV cameras. Conversely, while you may have expensive audio-visual equipment in your living room and beautiful antiques in your bedroom, we don’t recommend installing cameras in these areas unless you are willing to compromise on privacy at home. Any interior cameras you install should boast excellent low-light performance and be designed to blend in seamlessly with residential property interiors.
• Outdoor Cameras – We’ve already listed the most important outdoor locations to monitor with CCTV cameras but it’s worth considering all outdoor areas of your property when planning a new system, to ensure that no vulnerabilities are overlooked. You may, for example, have a swimming pool with a pump house that needs to be monitored to protect it from criminals. Some areas may be better protected by erecting a new fence rather than installing more CCTV cameras but in our experience, these decisions are best made on a case-by-case basis. In other words, what works best for your next-door neighbour may not be the right choice for you.

Once you are sure that all vulnerable areas have been accounted for and will be protected by CCTV cameras, you can revisit your initial budget calculations and make any necessary adjustments. If you need to reduce the initial cost of your new security system, you may wish to install only the most essential CCTV cameras at first, adding more later.  

Budget Considerations

You can’t finalise the design and specification of a new home security system without first deciding how much you are willing or able to spend. The number of cameras in your system, the quality of the sensors and the type and capacity of the network video recorder (NVR): All these details cannot be finalised without knowing how much money you have to work with.

If you conclude that you simply cannot afford the type of system required to protect your home right now, it may still be worth specifying a less expensive, less comprehensive system that can be upgraded to provide complete coverage when your financial situation improves. If you decide to take this approach, don’t forget to specify an NVR that can handle the total number of CCTV cameras you wish to install over time. If you choose a recorder that can only handle 4 connections but eventually requires 6, you will need to buy a new NVR when the new cameras are installed.

Optimising Camera Coverage

If you’d like to reduce your budget without reducing the coverage you can achieve with your network of CCTV cameras, there are a couple of strategies you can pursue to optimise coverage with fewer cameras:

• Install Wide-Angle Cameras – In some locations, such as the front of your home, installing wide-angle cameras may enable you to achieve full coverage with fewer units.
• Install More Advanced CCTV Cameras – Cameras with advanced functionality, such as pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ), can provide intermittent coverage for less important areas that may not merit installing a dedicated monitoring device.

Additionally, it may be possible to achieve complete coverage with fewer cameras by optimising the installation location of each one. This will be much easier to achieve with the help of experienced home security professionals such as ourselves.

The Ideal Number of Cameras for a Medium-Sized Home

When asked how many security cameras are typically needed for a medium-sized home, we normally recommend six units for full perimeter coverage. However, we have achieved excellent results with four cameras in some cases and for smaller homes, two cameras may provide adequate coverage if well positioned. To make a specific recommendation, we need to know the layout of your property and the plot of land on which it stands.

Getting It Right First Time

If you want to protect your home and everything inside it; a modern home security system with high-definition CCTV cameras is an excellent investment. However, to ensure your new system provides comprehensive protection, you must ascertain how many CCTV cameras are needed for complete coverage. If you are unsure how to do this, we recommend consulting a local expert. For homeowners in Perth, WA, Smart Security is the company to call. As home security specialists, we can design, and install a state-of-the-art home security system to keep your home and household safe.