Smart home wiring plan: what to run before the walls close

The most expensive smart home mistake is made at frame stage, and it costs nothing to avoid: not running the cable while the walls are open. Retrofit doubles or triples the labour on almost everything below. Here's the wiring plan that keeps a house smart-ready for the next twenty years.

The non-negotiables

• A central point for the rack. One ventilated cupboard or garage wall where every data run terminates — NBN in, router, switch, NVR, hubs. Every run below comes home to here.
• Cat6 to every TV point, office and access point location. Wi-Fi is for phones; anything that stays put deserves a cable. Ceiling access points (one per ~150 m²) are the difference between "the Wi-Fi is amazing" and a review call.
• Neutrals at every switch. Smart switches need them. It's a trivial ask at rough-in and a wall-opening job later.
• Cat6 or figure-8 to every camera position. Eaves corners, doorbell, driveway. Run it even if the cameras come later — the cable is $2/m, the scaffold to retrofit isn't.

The ones people forget

• Blind and curtain power. A GPO or 240 V feed high in the window architrave for motorised blinds — the single most-regretted omission we see.
• LED strip feeds. Kitchen kickers and overheads, alfresco perimeter, stair walls: run the feed and leave a driver location even if the strip is a stage-two purchase.
• Garage and gate. Data to the garage motor and a conduit to the front gate/letterbox. Future-you says thanks.
• Spare conduit riser between floors and into the roof. Whatever standard arrives in 2032, you can pull it.

Put it on the plan, not in your head

The difference between a wiring wish-list and a wiring plan is a floor plan with every point marked on it. Upload the builder's PDF to a plan designer, drop in the data points, cameras, access points and switches alongside the lighting layout, and every trade on site is reading the same document. It also produces the materials count — so the pre-wire gets quoted properly instead of "allow $2,500 PC sum".

Map your own pre-wire free — thirty minutes now saves the wall-opening later.