How to Install Security Cameras (2026): Heights, Wiring & the Steps Pros Charge $200 For

Quick Answer: Installing a security camera yourself takes about 30 to 60 minutes per camera and follows the same four steps regardless of brand: plan coverage, solve power, mount at 8 to 9 feet, then aim and tune the motion zones. Mounting height is the decision most DIY installs get wrong — 8 to 10 feet is the standard range, and staying at the low end keeps faces identifiable while remaining out of tampering reach. Your install difficulty is set entirely by power: a battery or solar camera needs no wiring at all, a Wi-Fi camera needs an outdoor outlet, and a PoE camera needs one Ethernet run — which carries power and video up to 328 feet on a single cable. Doing it yourself saves roughly $80 to $200 per camera in labor, per Angi’s 2026 cost data.

Most people research cameras for a week and then spend eleven minutes thinking about where the thing will actually go. That is backwards. A mid-range camera mounted correctly beats a flagship camera mounted at 14 feet under a soffit light, aimed at a hedge that moves every time the wind picks up. The install is where a security system either becomes evidence or becomes 400 useless notifications a day.

This guide covers the three install paths, the exact heights and angles that matter, how to run cable without ruining your siding, and where the genuine failure points are.

The three install paths at a glance

Before any drilling, identify which of these three jobs you are actually doing. They have almost nothing in common except the drill.

The single most useful thing to know before you buy: the camera you choose determines the install job, not the other way around. If you are unwilling to run cable, you have chosen event-clip recording and periodic battery charging, permanently. If you want continuous 24/7 recording, you have chosen to run Ethernet. There is no third option that gives you both.

Security camera installation by the numbers

• $80–$200 per camera in labor. Per Angi’s 2026 installation cost data, professional security camera installation averages about $1,290 for a whole-home job and typically ranges from $590 to $2,040, with a standard four-camera system landing between $600 and $1,500 installed. That labor figure is the actual value of a DIY weekend.
• 8 to 10 feet is the mounting range. Industry placement guidance converges on 8 to 10 feet for general outdoor surveillance — high enough to be out of tampering reach, low enough to capture facial features. Cameras dedicated to facial recognition belong far lower, around 5 to 6 feet, near eye level.
• 328 feet on one cable. Under the IEEE 802.3 Power over Ethernet standard, a single Cat5e or Cat6 run carries both power and video up to 100 meters (328 feet). One recorder in a closet reaches the driveway, the back yard and the garage without an outlet at any camera.
• 60% of burglars factor in cameras. In the University of North Carolina at Charlotte study of 422 incarcerated burglars, 60% said they would consider the presence of cameras or surveillance equipment when selecting a target, and more than 40% said it would prompt them to choose a different target. That is the argument for mounting cameras where they are seen.

Step 1: Plan coverage before you touch a drill

Walk the outside of the house at dusk and ask one question at each wall: how would someone get from the street to a door without being recorded? Those paths — not the convenient walls — are where cameras go.

Priorities in order, for a typical home:

1. Front door. Roughly a third of break-ins come through the front. A doorbell camera covers the threshold; a separate camera should cover the approach.
2. Back or side door. Almost always the least-overlooked and most-used entry point.
3. Driveway. Vehicles, packages, and the widest useful field of view on the property.
4. Ground-floor windows out of street view. The side yard nobody walks past.
5. Garage interior. Tools and bikes, and the door people forget to close.

Two planning rules that save rework: overlap the fields of view slightly so a person crossing your property is never invisible between two cameras, and never point a camera into the rising or setting sun — glare will white out the exact frames you eventually need. If you are still choosing hardware, our best home security camera rankings and the outdoor camera picks cover what performs at each of these spots.

Step 2: Solve power first

Power dictates everything else, so settle it before mounting.

Installing over a single weekend and missing one bracket, anchor or cable? A free 30-day Prime trial gets the replacement part to your door the next day instead of stalling the job until the following weekend.

If you want no wiring at all, a solar camera like the SoloCam S340 is the whole answer — bracket, two screws, done. The trade-off is that battery cameras record event clips, not continuous footage, and they wake on motion rather than run constantly. See our solar camera guide for the sun-hours math.

If you have an outdoor outlet, a plug-in Wi-Fi camera is the middle path. Test the Wi-Fi at the mounting spot before mounting: stand where the camera will go, hold your phone against the wall, and check that you have a solid signal. Walls attenuate more than people expect, and an exterior wall with foil-backed insulation can kill a signal that looked fine from two feet away.

If you want 24/7 recording, you are running Ethernet, and a PoE kit is the correct purchase. One cable per camera carries power and video up to 328 feet, and the recorder holds weeks of footage with no subscription.

Our PoE camera guide and wired system rankings go deeper on recorder and drive sizing. If you are torn between the wired and wireless approach entirely, the wired vs wireless comparison is the decision framework.

Step 3: Mount at the right height and angle

This is where most DIY installs quietly fail.

Height: 8 to 9 feet for general coverage. The accepted range is 8 to 10 feet, and lower within that band is better. At 8 feet you record faces. At 14 feet — a common instinct, because it feels safer — you record the tops of hats, and a hat defeats the entire system. If a camera is specifically meant to identify people at a controlled entry point, drop it to 5 to 6 feet where it sits near eye level.

Angle: tilt down so the face plane sits in the middle of the frame. Aim so that a person standing at your intended detection distance has their head in the upper third of the image, not at the very top edge. Do this while watching the live view on your phone, with a helper standing where the subject would be. Two minutes of this beats an hour of guessing.

The actual mounting sequence:

1. Hold the paper template from the box against the wall and mark the holes with a pencil.
2. Check for wiring or pipes before drilling — the area directly above an outlet or switch is the riskiest place to put a bit through a wall.
3. Drill pilot holes. Use a masonry bit for brick, block or stucco and insert the supplied plastic or sleeve anchors; a wood bit into a stud or fascia board needs no anchor.
4. If the cable passes through the wall, drill the pass-through hole with a slight downward slope toward the outside so water runs away from the hole, never into it.
5. Fasten the bracket, attach the camera, then aim and lock it down.
6. Seal the entry hole with exterior silicone or a weatherproof gland, and put a drip loop in the cable — a downward sag before the connector so water follows gravity instead of the cable into the housing. This one detail causes more dead outdoor cameras than any component failure.

Step 4: Run the cable cleanly

For PoE installs, cable routing is 80% of the labor and the reason professionals charge what they do.

• Attic or crawlspace first. Getting from the recorder to an exterior wall through unfinished space is far easier than fishing through finished walls.
• Terminate after pulling, not before. Pull bare cable through the hole, then crimp the RJ45 plug — a pre-made connector will not fit through a tidy 1/2-inch hole.
• Buy Cat6 in a spool with a few pre-made patch cables rather than measuring exactly. You will be wrong about at least one length.
• Keep Ethernet away from parallel mains runs. Crossing at right angles is fine; running taped alongside an electrical cable for 20 feet invites interference.
• Label both ends of every cable as you pull it. Eight unlabelled identical cables at the recorder is a genuinely miserable hour.
• Use outdoor-rated (UV-resistant, direct-burial if buried) cable outside. Indoor Cat6 exposed to sun goes brittle and cracks within a couple of seasons.

You will want a cable tester and a crimping kit for any run you terminate yourself — a $25 tester saves the afternoon you would otherwise spend guessing which of eight cables has a bad pin.

Step 5: Tune the software, or the install is not finished

A physically perfect install still produces a useless system if the motion settings are left at default.

• Draw activity zones so the camera ignores the public sidewalk and the road. This is the single biggest reduction in false alerts you can make.
• Turn on person and vehicle detection if the camera does it on-device, and turn off generic motion alerts once you trust it.
• Set recording quality high and alert sensitivity moderate. Recording quality costs storage; sensitivity costs your patience.
• Verify night mode after dark, on site. Infrared reflecting off a nearby wall, a railing or a glass pane will blow out the exposure, and you will only see it at night.
• Check the storage plan. If the camera records to microSD, use a high-endurance card — standard cards are not designed for continuous rewriting. Our local storage guide covers the options.

When to hire a professional

DIY is the right call for battery cameras, plug-in cameras, doorbells with existing wiring, and PoE runs through an accessible attic. Pay a professional when:

• Cable must be fished through finished two-storey walls with no attic access.
• You need cameras on a second-storey soffit and do not own a stable ladder or the confidence.
• You want a camera hardwired into a junction box with no existing outlet.
• The job is six or more cameras and you would rather buy back the weekend — at $80 to $200 per camera, a six-camera job is $480 to $1,200 in labor, which is a real trade but a defensible one.
• The property is commercial, where continuous recording, retention requirements and signage rules make a botched install expensive. Our small business camera guide covers that tier.

Frequently asked questions

Detailed answers to the most common security camera installation questions — the step-by-step sequence, correct mounting height, whether an electrician is needed, professional installation cost, installing without drilling, maximum cable run length, visible versus hidden placement, and where cameras must never point — are in the FAQ section of this page.

The bottom line

Installing security cameras is a planning job with a small amount of drilling attached. Decide the power path first — battery, plug-in or PoE — because it sets the entire difficulty of the project. Mount at 8 to 9 feet and tilt down so you capture faces rather than hat brims. Seal every hole and add a drip loop, because water kills more outdoor cameras than anything else. And finish the job in the app, drawing activity zones so the system alerts you about your walkway rather than the street. Do that, and you keep the $80 to $200 per camera an installer would have charged — and end up with footage that is worth having.

Next: compare the hardware itself in our best security camera brands rankings.