📡 Smart Home Hub Range Reference Guide
A quick reference for the typical usable range of common smart-home wireless protocols. Actual range varies significantly with walls, materials, and interference.
Why the table is a best case
Radio range is set by how much signal loss the receiver tolerates, and distance is a weak lever on that. In open air:
every doubling of distance costs 6 dB
range after an obstacle = free-space range × 10^(-loss dB / 20)So 6 dB of extra loss halves your range outright. Typical measured figures for what stands between a hub and a device:
| Obstacle | Loss at 2.4 GHz | Range left |
|---|---|---|
| Plasterboard wall | 3 - 5 dB | 60 - 70% |
| Brick or block wall | 6 - 12 dB | 25 - 50% |
| Concrete floor | 12 - 20 dB | 10 - 25% |
| Foil-backed insulation, mirror | 20 dB and up | under 10% |
One brick wall at 10 dB leaves about 32% of the open-air figure, turning Zigbee's 60 ft into roughly 19 ft.
What the mesh does and does not extend
- Only mains-powered devices repeat. Plugs, bulbs and wired switches carry traffic for others. Battery devices sleep to save power and route nothing, so adding a lock or door sensor never improves coverage.
- Hops are capped. Z-Wave allows four, so a chain reaches about four times its per-hop figure and no further, however close the next device looks on a map.
- Z-Wave's longer reach is the frequency. It runs sub-gigahertz, around 868 or 908 MHz depending on region, and lower frequencies pass through building materials better than the 2.4 GHz that Zigbee, Thread and BLE share.
Frequently asked questions
How far does Zigbee reach indoors?
30 to 60 ft per hop in open rooms, and often under 20 ft once a brick wall is in the way. The mesh is what covers a whole house, not the single-hop number.
Why does Z-Wave reach further than Zigbee?
It uses a sub-gigahertz band rather than 2.4 GHz. Longer wavelengths bend around obstacles and lose less energy in plaster and brick, buying roughly double the per-hop distance at the same power.
Will adding a battery sensor extend my mesh?
No. Battery devices join as sleeping end nodes and do not relay. Add a mains-powered smart plug or bulb between the hub and the weak spot instead.