There is a short window in every remodel — after rough framing, before insulation and drywall — when running cable costs almost nothing but labor. Once the walls close, the same work means cutting, patching, texturing and repainting. Plan for it and you get a house that accepts technology for decades; miss it and every upgrade becomes demolition.
Every cable standard on this list will be superseded. Conduit will not, because it is just a pathway. Flexible smurf tube run from a central closet to the media wall, the office and the attic means the next cable — whatever it is — gets pulled through instead of cut in.
If the budget only allows one item on this page, make it conduit to two or three key locations.
The common misconception is that a wireless smart home needs no cabling. In practice the opposite is true: reliable wireless coverage comes from multiple hardwired access points, and the sensors and controls that use Thread perform best with a mains-powered device in every area to carry the mesh.
Choosing devices that support Matter is the other half of not painting yourself into a corner. It is backed by Apple, Google, Amazon and Samsung, so a Matter device works across ecosystems rather than locking the house to one app.
Running this while walls are open is largely labor you are already paying for. Doing the same work afterwards means opening finished walls, patching, matching texture and repainting — routinely several times the cost of having done it during the remodel, and that is before the disruption of living through it twice.
The drywall stage is the hard deadline. Once it closes, the price of every item on this page multiplies. If you are also planning lighting, do that layout now too — our lighting and Title 24 guide explains why the ceiling plan has to be settled at the same moment.
That last question is usually the one that changes the plan. Panel capacity, not product choice, decides what a house can run — covered in the data-driven home. For how the wiring, lighting, cabinetry and energy decisions fit together, start with the overview of the whole approach.
At minimum: Cat6a to every room and to ceiling locations for wireless access points, neutral wires at every switch box, conduit from a central panel to two or three key walls, and a structured wiring panel with power and ventilation where it all terminates. Add speaker wire for in-ceiling audio, low-voltage to windows you may motorize, and dedicated circuits for an EV charger, induction range or heat pump equipment. Conduit is the single most valuable item because it lets future cable be pulled without opening walls.
Most of them do, and this is the most common thing that stops a smart lighting project in an older home. Houses wired before roughly the 2010s often ran only a switch loop, with no neutral at the switch box. While walls are open, pulling neutrals to every switch location is inexpensive; afterwards it means opening walls at each switch. Some no-neutral smart switches exist, but they are more limited and can behave poorly with LED loads.
For a remodel, yes. The cable itself is a small part of the cost compared with the labor of running it, and Cat6a is the current residential standard: it handles 10 Gbps and gives Wi-Fi 7 access points room to grow. Since you are paying mostly for the install rather than the wire, installing the shorter-lived option to save a little on material is a poor trade in a wall you will not open again for twenty years.
Matter is a smart home interoperability standard backed by Apple, Google, Amazon and Samsung, so devices that support it work across those ecosystems instead of only one. For a house being wired now it is the safest default, because it reduces the risk that your switches, sensors and shades become orphaned when a manufacturer changes direction. Thread, often mentioned alongside it, is the low-power wireless mesh many Matter sensors use.
Considerably more, and the multiple is the point rather than any single figure. During a remodel the walls are already open, so you are paying for cable and the labor to pull it. Afterwards the same job means cutting into finished walls, patching, matching texture, repainting, and working around a household that is living there. It is routinely several times the cost, which is why the pre-drywall window is worth planning around.
Yes, and usually more than people expect. Reliable wireless coverage in a house comes from several hardwired access points rather than one router, and those want Cat6a runs to ceiling locations. Thread-based sensors also perform better when mains-powered devices are distributed through the house to carry the mesh. Wireless describes how the devices talk, not how the house should be built.
