The honest answer: more than you think
The TIA-570-D residential cabling standard sets a minimum of two outlets per work area — and "work area" basically means every room. That's a floor, not a target. The biggest regret homeowners share after move-in is almost always the same: "I wish we'd run more ethernet."
Wireless keeps getting faster, but the demands stay ahead. A modern home has Wi-Fi access points, streaming devices, game consoles, work-from-home video calls, security cameras, smart-home hubs, doorbells, and increasingly PoE-powered lighting — all of which run better, more reliably, and more securely on Cat6 than on Wi-Fi.
And the cost of running an extra cable during rough-in is a fraction of opening a wall later.
Room-by-room: what we actually pull
These are the counts we recommend during pre-wire for a typical Seattle single-family build. Every drop is a pair of Cat6 or Cat6A cables terminated at a single wall plate — running two cables per location costs marginally more than one and gives you a hot spare.
Living room
4–6 drops behind the TV wall (TV, streaming box, console, soundbar, future smart device) plus 2 drops on the opposite wall for furniture rearrangement and a future access point. The TV wall is the single hardest location to retrofit later because of mantel placement, masonry, and the angles of mounted TVs.
Primary bedroom
2–4 drops behind the TV wall and 2 drops at the desk location. Add 1 drop in the ceiling if there's any chance of mounting an access point — bedrooms on the far side of a two-story home are the most common dead zones.
Each additional bedroom
2 drops at the desk wall, 2 drops at the TV wall. Kid bedrooms become guest rooms, offices, gym rooms — every former bedroom we revisit has different priorities than the one before.
Kitchen
1–2 drops near where a smart display or counter-mounted tablet might live, plus 1 drop for a wired Wi-Fi access point on the ceiling. Kitchens are central in most floor plans and a great spot for AP coverage.
Home office
4 drops at the desk, minimum. One for the PC, one for the dock, one for a hardwired video-call backup, and one spare. A second wall location gets 2 drops if the room might double as a recording or gaming setup.
Garage
2 drops for an EV charger smart panel, garage door opener, or future workshop network. 1 ceiling drop for an AP if the garage is attached — concrete walls between the garage and house often kill the 5 GHz signal.
Outdoors
2 drops at each planned exterior camera location — outdoor-rated Cat6 (UV-resistant gel-filled or shielded), not regular indoor Cat6. 1 drop at the front door for a wired doorbell or intercom if you want to avoid Wi-Fi reliability issues.
Ceiling locations
This is the underrated category. Plan 1 drop per ~1,500 sq ft of floor area to ceiling-mounted access point locations. You don't have to install the APs at move-in — just having the cable there means you can add them without opening drywall.
How to count it up
For a typical 2,500 sq ft Seattle home with three bedrooms, an office, two living areas, and standard outdoor coverage, that math comes out to roughly 30–40 drops. That sounds like a lot until you realize each pair of cables to a single wall plate counts as two drops, and modern patch panels handle 24 or 48 ports easily.
A more conservative build might run 20–25 drops. A heavy smart-home build with motorized shades, distributed audio, and multiple camera zones can climb past 60.
Cat6 vs Cat6A — when to upgrade
For typical home use, Cat6 supports 1 Gbps to the full 100 meters and 10 Gbps to about 55 meters (longer runs degrade). For most homes under 5,000 sq ft, no single run exceeds 55 meters, so Cat6 handles future 10G upgrades just fine.
Cat6A supports full 10 Gbps to 100 meters with 500 MHz of bandwidth. It costs more, is thicker, and is harder to terminate. We recommend it specifically for: runs to home office, runs to the structured wiring panel from a future fiber NID, and runs to ceiling APs in larger homes. Mixing the two is common and sensible.
Don't run anything below Cat6. Cat5e is fine for what it does, but the marginal cost during pre-wire is too small to justify the future limitation.
What we recommend for Seattle homes
Newer Seattle builds in places like Madrona, Mt. Baker, and Newcastle tend to be three-story with detached garages or daylight basements — that's a lot of square footage with vertical separation between floors. We almost always recommend a structured wiring panel in a central closet or utility room and at least one access point drop per floor.
Older Seattle homes in Wallingford, Greenwood, and Beacon Hill are typically smaller but harder to retrofit because of plaster walls and balloon framing — there, we recommend running everything you might want during any remodel that opens walls, because the next chance won't come for a while.
If you're between architectural plan finalization and rough-in, this is the cheapest time you'll ever have to add cabling. After drywall, every drop costs significantly more.
Quick pre-wire checklist
- Walk every room before drywall and physically tape a sticky note where each ethernet plate will go.
- Note where TVs will mount — wall, recess, or ceiling.
- Identify your structured wiring panel location (basement, garage, or central closet).
- Plan ceiling AP locations using floor plans, not guesses.
- Add 2 extra runs to the structured panel for whatever you didn't think of.
Have questions about your project? Contact us for a free estimate.