Outdoor Security Camera Placement: How to Avoid Blind Spots

Walk the outside of your home and mark each entry point on your sketch. That means the front door, back door, sliding doors, side gates, garage, and any ground-floor windows someone could reach.

Then draw the routes someone would take to get to each one. A camera that only sees the door catches a person for two seconds. A camera that sees the path to the door catches them for ten, and gives you a face on the way in.

Add anything worth stealing that lives outside, too. Cars in the driveway, a shed full of tools, or a boat or caravan beside the house all deserve a spot on the plan.

Take the horizontal field of view from the spec sheet and draw it as a wedge from each proposed camera position. A 100° camera gets a 100° wedge.

If the spec sheet gives a lens size in millimetres instead of degrees, a smaller number means a wider view. A 2.8 mm lens is a typical wide-angle choice for close coverage, while 4 mm or 6 mm lenses narrow the view but reach further with more detail. Varifocal cameras let you adjust between the two after mounting, which is handy on long driveways.

Now shorten your wedge. The cone shows what the camera can see, which is very different from what it can identify. A wide lens might detect movement at the back fence but won't give you a usable face beyond a few metres.

Draw your wedges out to the distance where you'd actually recognise someone, and treat everything beyond that as background.

This is the step that actually eliminates blind spots. Each camera's coverage should finish inside another camera's view, with no gap between them.

The most reliable pattern is to mount cameras on adjacent corners of the house, each looking along the wall toward the other. Camera A covers the wall and the ground beneath camera B, and camera B returns the favour.

The dead zone under each one disappears. Anyone trying to cover, spray or knock a camera gets filmed by its neighbour.

For most homes, somewhere around 2.4–3 m is the sweet spot. That's high enough to be out of easy reach from the ground, and low enough that the camera sees faces rather than the tops of hats and hoodies.

Go higher and the angle steepens, so faces disappear under caps and hoods. The dead zone underneath grows, and each person takes up fewer pixels.

It's tempting on a two-storey home to tuck everything under the upper eave. A door camera up there usually records a lot of scalp. We cover the trade-offs in more detail in our piece on the ideal camera mounting height.

Eaves are the most common culprit behind washed-out night footage. If the lens sits tight against the eave lining, the camera's infrared (IR) night lighting bounces off it and back into the lens, leaving a white haze across the top of the image.

Drop the camera a little lower on the wall, or check that the lens sits clear of the eave edge once the camera is tilted into position.

Downpipes cause two problems. They block a vertical strip of the frame, and at night they reflect IR straight back at the lens the same way the eave does. Shift the camera along the wall until the pipe is out of shot, or use a corner or pole bracket to push the lens out past it.

Camera style matters here too. Domes tuck neatly under an eave and suit wide views close to the house, while bullets on a wall bracket reach further and are easier to aim past obstructions. Our comparison of dome versus bullet cameras walks through which suits which spot.

Cameras struggle when the brightest thing in the frame is behind the subject. Someone standing in front of a sunlit glass door becomes a dark silhouette, even on an expensive camera.

Avoid aiming east- or west-facing cameras where the low morning or afternoon sun will sit in the frame. Keep bright windows, glass doors and pool areas out of the background where you can.

Don't point a camera at your own floodlight or a street light either, because it'll flare after dark. If a bright background is unavoidable, choose a camera with true WDR.

Most wired cameras now use PoE, which carries power and data down a single network cable, so you don't need a power point at every camera.

On a single-storey home, the tidiest run usually goes through the roof space and down through the eave lining right beside the camera. Mount the camera on a junction box so the connection sits inside it, dry and out of reach of anyone with a pair of snips.

Leave a small drip loop so water runs off the cable before it reaches the hole, and seal every penetration with outdoor-rated sealant. Exposed runs belong in UV-stabilised conduit.

Standard Ethernet runs are good for up to 100 m, so length is rarely a problem for a house. Try not to run data cable tightly alongside mains cabling for long stretches.

If a camera needs a new power point under the eaves, that's a job for a licensed electrician. Mains wiring isn't DIY territory anywhere in Australia.

Wi-Fi cameras still need power, and they need a strong signal at the exact mounting spot. Check it on your phone at the wall itself, because brick and metal fascias can kill reception a metre from where it seemed fine.

Power the camera temporarily and have your helper hold it in position on the ladder while you watch the live view. A clamp or tape will do if you're on your own.

Then walk every route you drew in step 1 at a normal pace. Walk it like an intruder would, hugging walls and fences rather than strolling down the middle of the path.

Record a short clip and play it back as well. The recorded stream and the live view on your phone can differ in sharpness and frame rate, and the recording is what you'll rely on.

Run the test twice more. Once after dark with outside lights off so you see the true IR picture, and once at the time of day when the sun sits lowest on that side of the house. Mark the winning position with painter's tape.

Once the camera is mounted, fine-tune the tilt. As a starting point, keep the horizon in the top third of the image or out of it entirely, because sky wastes pixels and throws off exposure.

For doorways, mount the camera to one side of the door rather than directly above it, angled across the approach. People then walk toward the lens at a slight angle, which gives you far more of their face.

Then set motion detection zones in the app so the camera ignores the street, swaying trees and your neighbour's yard. It cuts false alerts and keeps the recording focused on your own property.

Surveillance and privacy rules vary between states, so check yours. Aiming away from neighbours' windows and backyards is good practice wherever you live.