Nobody sets out to have visible cable. It happens because the wiring decisions get made months before anyone thinks about where the television, the speakers, the modem or the desk will actually go — and by the time those things arrive, the walls are closed and painted.
On a new build or a renovation you get one chance to avoid all of it, and it costs almost nothing to take. This is what that looks like in practice.
The decision happens before the linings go on
There is a window in every build — after the framing is up and the services are roughed in, before the gib goes on — when running a cable anywhere in the house costs a few minutes. Once the linings are up, the same cable costs a wall repair, a patch, a sand and a repaint, and it may not be possible at all through a lined ceiling or over a concrete slab.
The practical consequence: the electrical layout has to be settled while the house is still a set of frames. Not “power in the lounge”, but which wall the TV goes on, how high it sits, where the equipment lives, and what plugs into it.
Walk the house before it exists
The exercise that saves the most money takes an hour. Go room by room on the plan and place the furniture, then place everything that needs power or data next to it.
- Living areas — screen height and position, and a recess or cabinet directly behind or below it for the equipment. Sockets at the screen, not at the skirting three metres away. Speaker positions decided now, because in-ceiling and in-wall speakers need cable before the linings.
- Kitchen — appliance circuits, but also where the small appliances actually live day to day, and sockets on the island if there is one. This is the room where people add power boards later.
- Bedrooms — bedside sockets at bed height, with USB where it suits, so there is no cable up the wall to a lamp.
- Home office — more sockets than seems reasonable, at desk height, plus network cable. This is where the tangle always ends up.
- Outdoors — sockets and lighting circuits for the deck, garden, shed and gate. Adding these later means digging.
- Garage — the EV charger, whether or not there is an EV yet. Running the cable and leaving it capped is a fraction of the cost of doing it afterwards.
Build the paths, not just the cables
The cable you run today matters less than the route you leave behind. Conduit and draw strings between the switchboard, the media wall, the office and the ceiling space mean that in five years a new cable is a pull rather than a renovation. It is the cheapest insurance in the whole build.
The same applies to depth of provision. Data cabling to every room that could plausibly want it — TVs, access points, cameras, the office — costs very little while the walls are open and is disproportionately expensive to add later. Wi-fi does not remove the need for it; access points need cable too, and they need to be in the ceiling, not on a shelf.
Where several systems converge, give them a home: a structured cabling enclosure or a cupboard with power, ventilation and every run terminated in one place. Everything that would otherwise sit in a pile behind the TV goes there instead.
Concealment techniques worth specifying
Once the paths exist, the visible result comes down to detail:
- Recessed outlets behind wall-mounted screens, so the plug sits flush and the screen sits flat against the wall.
- Cable entry and exit plates where a run has to leave the cavity, rather than a hole and a grommet.
- Floor boxes in open-plan spaces where furniture sits away from walls — far better than a lead crossing a room.
- Joinery integration — cable routes and ventilation designed into the cabinetry with the joiner, not drilled through it afterwards.
- Chased and conduited runs in block or concrete construction, decided before the pour or the plaster.
Lighting is the same problem in a different form
Lighting has the same one-shot timing. Fitting positions, switching arrangements, dimming and any control system all need to be settled before the ceiling closes. Retrofitting a two-way switch or moving a downlight after the fact is exactly the kind of small job that costs far more than it should.
A lighting plan drawn at design stage also stops the default outcome, which is a grid of downlights doing every job in the room badly. Layered lighting — general, task and accent, on separate switching — is a design decision, not a fitting decision.
Get the electrician in early, not on site
The most useful conversation happens at plan stage, alongside the architect or designer, before anything is ordered. That is when socket positions, circuit layout, switchboard capacity, control systems and cable routes can all be resolved together — and when the switchboard can be sized for what the house will need in ten years rather than what it needs on handover day.
Our electrical planning service exists for exactly this stage. For work on an existing home, see renovation electricians, and for the AV and network side, data and communications.
If the walls are already closed
Not everything is a new build. In a finished house, cable can often still be dropped inside an interior wall cavity between two plates, run through the ceiling space or under a timber floor, or — as the reversible option — covered in paintable trunking. What cannot be done is running an ordinary extension lead inside a wall; where a screen needs power, the correct answer is a new socket behind it.
Any of that is electrical work and needs a registered electrician, both for certification and because someone should know where the existing circuits run before a hole goes in the wall.
To talk through wiring for a build, a renovation or a tidy-up, call French Electrical on 09 274 8082.