How do I get wifi in a garden office or outbuilding?
Four options ranked by how well they work, and why the boring one wins.
- Difficulty
- intermediate
- Time
- 2 hr
- Read
- 2 min
- Safety
- warning
Short answer
Run an ethernet cable if you possibly can — it is the only option that is reliably fast and unaffected by weather. Everything wireless degrades through walls, glass and rain.
A garden office is usually far enough away, and through enough walls, that ordinary wifi will not reach usefully. The options divide into ones that solve it properly and ones that mostly work.
Safety
Step by step
- Try it first before spending anything.Take a laptop out and run a speed test. Occasionally the signal is adequate, particularly if the building is close and the walls are thin.
- Run an ethernet cable if at all possible.External-grade or direct-burial cable in a duct. Unaffected by weather, walls or interference, and it will still be fast in ten years. This is the right answer where it is feasible.
- Bury it properly if it goes underground.In a duct, at a sensible depth, marked so future digging finds it. Do not run data cable in the same duct as unprotected mains.
- Try powerline if there is already a mains supply out there.If the outbuilding is on the house consumer unit, powerline often works well. If it is fed from a separate supply, it usually will not.
- Consider an outdoor access point.A weatherproof unit on the house wall facing the outbuilding, cabled back to the router. Good coverage across a garden and much better than putting an extender indoors near a window.
- Or a point-to-point wireless bridge.A matched pair of small dishes, one on each building, with line of sight. Fast and reliable over long distances, and the standard answer where cable is impossible.
- Treat a basic extender as a last resort.An extender in a window facing the garden is better than nothing and considerably worse than everything else here. It halves throughput and the signal still crosses two walls.
- Think about power and weather.Anything outdoors needs a weatherproof rating and a power source. Check both before buying.
Tips
- Cost order is usually cable, powerline, outdoor access point, wireless bridge. Reliability order is roughly the reverse of convenience.
- If you are having power run to an outbuilding by an electrician, ask them to pull a data cable through at the same time. It costs almost nothing while the trench is open.
- Wet foliage between two points attenuates wireless links noticeably. A link that works in winter can degrade in summer.
Questions people ask
What is the best way to get internet to a garden office?
An ethernet cable in a duct, where feasible. It is the only option unaffected by weather, walls and interference, and it stays fast indefinitely.
Will a wifi extender reach my shed?
Rarely well. It has to receive a weak signal and rebroadcast it, halving throughput in the process. An outdoor access point or a cable works far better.