The good news is that wood generally does not block or inhibit a wifi signal. Plywood and wood in general do not seriously impact your wifi strength but thick timber walls can lessen your wifi signal especially if it has to travel through multiple floors of your home.
The reality is that as a building material, wood and wood components usually aren’t the biggest culprit that causes wifi strength loss but other materials like concrete and bricks can. And large trees around your property may also play a part in signal loss.
Let’s take a look at wood compared to other building materials and also at other factors that can impair your wifi signal before you go blaming your hardwood floor!
So not only will we discuss the impact of wood and wood materials on your wifi signal, we’ll also take a look at other materials and reasons that you might have a degraded signal that you might not be able to blame specifically on wood alone.
Is wood blocking your wifi connection or is it something else?
It may not be wood that is blocking or weakening your wifi connection if you’re experiencing signal loss.
While a wifi signal can be negatively impacted by other tech like a bluetooth connection, a neighbor’s wifi connection or a microwave in the home, the building materials in your home are more likely to be responsible for a weak wifi connection.
Let’s take a look at some common building materials to see how they can impact wifi strength in a home.
| Building material | Wifi weakening ability |
| Plywood | Negligible. Plywood is thin, cheap wood that tends not to block a wifi signal to any degree. |
| Drywall | Low. Drywall is thin and made from gypsum and paper and such, won’t block a wifi signal very well on its own. |
| Wood | Low. Wood floors in a home for example tend not to be responsible for wifi signal loss. But the more wooden floors of a home a wifi signal has to travel through, the greater the wifi signal loss can occur. Interestingly, trees are good at absorbing wifi signals. More on that below. |
| Floor heating | Low. Floor heating has in some cases been suspected to interfere with wifi but then again the use of a microwave oven, other wifi networks and Bluetooth devices have also been suspected of doing the same. Still, the risk of wifi signal interference is low but the more floors the wifi signal has to go through, the greater the risk of signal loss. |
| Metal | Low. A thick metal cabinet may block your wifi connection however if you choose to put your modem next to one or inside one. Leave your modem in the open, off the floor and outside any sort of housing that can negatively impact it. |
| Timber | Medium. The thicker the timber the more likely that it could interfere with your wifi’s strength. Thick timber walls can inhibit a wifi signal. Some wood is more dense than others, too. |
| Concrete 102 mm | High. While 102 mm thick concrete will not block a wifi signal as much as 203 mm thick concrete can, this type of concrete wall can still impair your wifi signal strength to a noticeable degree. |
| Brick-faced concrete | Higher. Take a concrete wall and add a brick look over top and you have two materials potentially helping to block your wifi signal. The look of the wall can be nice and modern but it can decrease your wifi signal. |
| Concrete 203 mm | Very high. Thick concrete walls and reinforced concrete can severely inhibit and reduce your wifi signal up to the point of blocking it completely especially in a basement. The thicker the concrete – 203 mm and higher – the more likely the concern. The use of a repeater or other device may help to boost signal strength. |
So as you can see, it’s more likely that another building material – particularly brick, concrete, masonry or combination – will be the culprit that is sapping your wifi strength, not wood.
But thick timber and dense woods can still have a negative impact especially if for example you have concrete walls or floors along with wood flooring on top.
Large trees can inhibit your wifi signal
Is your home surrounded by large, tall, leafy trees? If so, you might find your Internet signal negatively affected depending on where you put your modem.
Large, tall trees with thick leaves and branches can attenuate (reduce) your wifi signal. Wifi works best with a clear line of sight so anything that can block this line can in theory reduce its strength.
The water on the leaves of large trees may also negatively the strength of your signal. Water droplets can absorb some of the wifi signal before it reaches your home.
What can you do in the this instance?
Prune your trees and locate your modem in a way that it won’t be blocked by trees or other obstructions.
How to maximize the wifi signal in your home
Here are some suggestions to maximize the strength of your wifi signal in your home at all times.
- Put your modem as close to the main area of Internet usage as possible. If you use the Internet on all floors, put it on the middle floor or as close to it as possible.
- Ensure you’re using the most recent modem especially if you rent it and are entitled to the latest technology by your ISP. Modem technology is improved over time and since it’s generally plugged in 24/7, you might need a new one after 2 years or so from wear alone. More expensive ones might last as long as 5 years, technology permitting.
- Place your modem off the floor and as far away from possible obstructions as possible.
- Ensure your modem is updated with the latest software.
- Learn how to switch the channel on your modem to select a better one. Contact your ISP to learn how.
- Don’t be afraid to reboot your modem from time to time. Whether using a pin to push the reset button on the back of the modem or by unplugging the modem for at least a few seconds, rebooting can help to reset it just like when you reboot your PC or laptop.
- Change your wifi password every so often to ensure a neighbor or friend isn’t “borrowing” your wifi signal and sapping its strength that way.
And if all else fails, contact your ISP directly for advice and help. They might have suggestions specific to you that aren’t discussed here that you may not have considered.
Concrete can block a Wifi signal completely (a personal anecdote)
While wood tends not to block wifi or weaken the signal noticeably, concrete is another story. While offices and businesses can account for this, your home wifi connection in a concrete house might be more difficult to address.
Having lived in Germany in a concrete (Beton as it’s known in German) massivhaus that is built with concrete floors and walls as is commonly done, that’s something of a challenge. Wifi weakens significantly through concrete.
From personal experience, we put our modem plugged into the center floor to receive Internet on that floor, the top floor above and the ground floor below.
But the moment you walked into the office on the top floor at the corner of the house, the wifi could be weak on some days.
And when you walked halfway down the stairs to the basement, you lost the wifi connection completely. Other than being able to send and receive a Whats App message from time to time, no Internet connectivity existed to even open a basic webpage in the basement.
I made up for it with plug-in repeaters on the bottom floor to boost the signal but even with that, internet connectivity in the basement was virtually 0.
Summary
While wood generally doesn’t negatively impact wifi signal strength to any great degree, thicker and denser wood can attenuate your wifi significantly.
And if you have multiple materials to contend with – concrete walls with dense hardwood flooring and perhaps large, leafy trees around your home – the chance that your wifi signal is diminished increases.
You’re more likely to have difficulty getting decent wifi in a concrete building if you have a personal router or modem set up. Wifi does have difficulty penetrating thick concrete and you might very well benefit from a repeater or other device to boost the signal.