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How many APs. For your actual building.

Square footage alone is a lie. The model below mixes location type, interior wall density, device load, and AP tier so you don't end up with eight APs in a building that needed three — or three in a building that needed eight.
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3 APs·range 2 – 4·U6-Pro
8,000 ft² · office · good coverage

2 APs — lean grid — every spot is covered, no redundancy if an AP fails.

3 APs (typical) — recommended — clean −67 dBm coverage everywhere, healthy grid spacing.

4 APs — full redundancy — one AP can fail without losing coverage.

coverage is cleanall checks pass

AP count fits the footprint at the chosen load, grid spacing is healthy for the wall density, and the recommended tier meets the workload. Quote it and ship.

Site parameters · location, footprint, walls, load, AP tier8,000 ft² · 1 fl
Location typeOffices and homes are different RF problems. An open office floor is one big cell with no walls. A home has bedrooms, bathrooms, and a kitchen — every wall costs signal. Picking one loads sensible defaults; you can change anything afterward.
Building sizeUse length × width if you know the footprint dimensions, or skip straight to square footage if that's how you think about your space. The calculator uses sqft × floors to determine total area.
Length
ft
Width
ft
Floors
floor
Ceiling
ft
Wall densityEvery interior wall costs 3–6 dB of signal. More walls = smaller per-AP cells = more APs. This is the single biggest input. Open · warehouse, open plan, cubicles only — almost no interior partitions
ConstructionTick Heavy if your walls are mostly concrete, brick, plaster + lath, or have metal mesh inside. Drywall passes Wi-Fi cleanly; concrete and brick eat 8–15 dB per pass — about 3× more attenuation per wall. Pre-war NYC buildings and older Long Island estates often qualify.
Device loadCoverage and capacity are different problems. Light needs APs spaced for signal. Busy needs the same coverage plus extra capacity because dozens of clients share each AP's airtime. Typical · mix of Zoom, file transfer, normal office work
AP tierPro is the sane default for almost everything. Lite is fine for a small home. Enterprise has bigger antennas and more spatial streams, so the same AP serves more clients without dropping throughput — worth it when you have a high client count per AP.
Suggested AP placement · schematic floor plan3 APs per floor · ~2,667 ft² each · good coverage
CONFOFFICEOFFICEKITCHEN
single floor · 52ft grid spacingSchematic only — Foresight plans against your real floor plan.
Take it with you

Location-aware baseline, five honest multipliers.

Office and home are different RF problems, so the calculator picks the right baseline before applying multipliers. The math is intentionally legible — you can audit every step in a spreadsheet.

01

Office vs home — different starting point

A Wi-Fi 6 AP cleanly covers ~3,500 sq ft in an open office. The same AP in a walled-up home covers ~2,000 sq ft because every bedroom door costs signal. We start from the right baseline so the rest of the math doesn't have to fight gravity.

02

Wall density, not wall material

What reduces effective per-AP coverage is how many interior walls a signal crosses, not what they're made of. Open / Average / Heavy maps directly to that. The heavy-construction toggle is the optional modifier for concrete, brick, or plaster interiors.

03

A range, not a single number

The output is min / typical / max — typical is the recommendation, min is the lean version (no redundancy), max is the redundant version (full coverage even if an AP fails). Heavy construction and busy device load widen the upper end automatically.

What goes wrong when this gets sized in a hurry.

The four mistakes below cause the majority of "why is the WiFi flaky?" tickets we end up debugging on-site.

× WRONG-PROFILE

Using office defaults for a home (or vice versa).

The first input matters. A 3,000 sq ft suburban home isn't a small office — it has bedrooms, bathrooms, and a kitchen separating each space. Picking Home loads sensible defaults; picking Office on a home will under-count APs every time.

× HEAVY-SHELL

Ticking Heavy Construction for a concrete-clad office.

The toggle is for interiorconstruction. A concrete exterior shell only attenuates spill into the parking lot — it doesn't affect interior cell coverage. Tick Heavy only when the dividing walls inside are concrete, brick, or plaster + lath.

× WRONG-TIER

Buying U6-Lite for a busy floor.

The Lite is a perfectly good AP. It is not the right tier for 50 simultaneous video calls. When you pick Busy load the calculator flags the upgrade — listen to it. Same AP count, better airtime ceiling.

× NO-SURVEY

Trusting the calculator for a real install.

This is a sizing tool, not a site survey. The output is good enough to budgeta job. Before you cut cable, get an RF heatmap with predictive modeling — that's what we do for paid engagements.

The terms above, in one paragraph each.

Location type
Office or home. Picks the starting per-AP coverage baseline — 3,500 sq ft for offices (open floors, ample line-of-sight) vs 2,000 sq ft for homes (more interior walls per unit area). Choose one to load sensible defaults.
Wall density
How chopped-up the floor is. Open = warehouse or open plan; Average = mixed office with cubicles + a few private rooms, or a standard 3-4 BR home; Heavy = cellular layout or pre-war apartment. This is the single biggest input.
Heavy construction
Optional toggle for buildings where the interior partitions are mostly concrete, brick, plaster + lath, or have metal mesh. Adds a 15% penalty on top of wall density because each wall pass costs 8–15 dB instead of the 3–6 dB you get through drywall.
Device load
How much airtime each client consumes. Light is browsing/email; Typical is mixed office traffic; Busy is video conferencing, classrooms, packed rooms. Busy widens the upper end of the range to reserve capacity headroom.
AP tier
The AP model you want quoted. Pro is the sane default for most spaces. Lite for small homes, Enterprise when client density per AP is high (Enterprise has bigger antennas and more spatial streams — same cell, more clients).
Range output
Three numbers instead of one. Min is bare coverage with no redundancy; Typical is the recommendation; Max is full redundancy plus capacity headroom for peak load.
FAQ

The questions we get every week.

If your question is not here, send it — a senior engineer reads every inbound.

Why a range instead of a single AP count?
Because AP placement varies with real-world floor plans, mounting points, and structural cores. The typical number is the recommendation; min tells you the leanest you can get away with; max is the redundant version where one AP can fail without losing the floor.
How accurate is this for my building?
Within ±1 AP of typical for ordinary construction. For heavy-construction or busy-load scenarios the range widens automatically. For metal-heavy buildings, multi-tenant floors, or anywhere with significant interference, get a site survey before committing.
Why does it default to U6-Pro?
Pro is the right baseline for ~85% of commercial buildings. It handles Wi-Fi 6, has solid range, and isn't over-spec for general office use. Lite is for small homes; Enterprise is for high-density / heavy-load floors.
My building is concrete-clad — should I tick Heavy Construction?
Only if the interior partitions are also concrete / brick / plaster. A concrete shell with drywall partitions inside passes signal just fine between rooms — the shell only attenuates spill outside the building.
Does this account for outdoor coverage?
No — indoor only. Outdoor coverage is a different model (line-of-sight, mesh, weatherized hardware). Contact us for a real outdoor design.
What's the cost output missing?
Switches, gateway, cabling, mounts, and labor. The number above is just the APs at typical count. A complete deployment usually runs 2.5–4× the AP cost.
SISTER TOOLS
04Protect storage calculator

NVR sizing for the cameras going in alongside these APs.

Open →05PoE & UPS planner

Switch power budget for these APs plus the rest of the fleet.

Open →06Cable length calculator

Footage and patch panel estimate for the AP drops.

Open →

Want a real RF heatmap, not an estimate?

We do a site walk, measure attenuation against your actual walls, and hand back a Foresight floor plan with each AP placed and its predicted heatmap.

Talk to an engineer