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Technology · 5 min read · 28 January 2026

Wired or wireless in an apartment

When radio solutions are enough and when it is worth opening the walls. Reliability, range and cost compared — and why the same function can be cheap or expensive depending on the stage of construction.

What the difference comes down to

In the wired setup every sensor, switch and output has a connection back to the switchboard — either a data bus or its own circuit. In the wireless setup the same devices talk to the server over radio and take their power from a battery or from the nearest point.

This is not a choice between “better” and “worse”, but between two sets of constraints. What decides it is the stage at which you come into the building, and how much interference with the walls you are prepared to accept.

When wireless is enough

An apartment or a house that is already finished — that is the natural habitat for radio solutions. Lighting control tucked inside a wall box, thermostats where the radiators are, opening sensors on the windows, blind motors. The scope is narrower than with full cabling, but day-to-day comfort is practically the same.

In one of our projects in Wilanów we modernised an existing installation using exactly this technology. Bringing lighting, three types of heating output, shading, the alarm and solar production monitoring under automation worked out with minimal changes to the wiring.

When it is worth opening the walls

If you are building or renovating back to shell — wired, no discussion. It is not even about the functions you will switch on at the start, but about the fact that the bus and spare switchboard capacity are then the cheapest they will ever be in the building’s life. Adding functions over the following years comes down to a device and some configuration.

Wireless lets you catch up on what can no longer be run in the walls. Wired buys you options you do not yet know you will need.

Wired also wins wherever the density of points matters: large open spaces with many lighting circuits, heating split into a dozen or more zones, elaborate shading responding to sun and wind.

Reliability, range and batteries

A wired connection has no way of getting lost — its only advantage, but a decisive one. Radio solutions are stable today, but they introduce two things to keep an eye on: range in a building with reinforced concrete floors, and batteries in the sensors.

• Range — we measure it before quoting, not after installation
• Batteries — several years of life, but the system has to report when they run down
• Response time — imperceptible for lighting; it shows up in logic driven by dense measurements
• Logic — in both setups it runs locally on the server, so losing internet stops nothing

Loxone Air — coverage in every room thanks to a mesh network

The radio solutions we install run on Loxone Air — a protocol designed solely for building automation. It operates in the 868 MHz band rather than 2.4 GHz like Wi-Fi or Zigbee. The lower frequency passes through walls and floors more easily, and the band itself is not crowded with home routers, TVs and the neighbours’ equipment.

What matters most, though, is that Air builds a mesh network. Every mains-powered device — a module in a wall box, a smart socket, a blind motor — also acts as a signal repeater. A message from a sensor in the furthest room does not have to reach the server directly: it hops through other devices, and the network picks the best route by itself, bypassing any device that has stopped responding. The more devices in the apartment, the denser the network and the more reliable the coverage — even beyond a reinforced concrete floor or at the end of a long corridor.

• Delivery confirmation — the device reports back that the command arrived, so the server is never sending orders blind
• Battery sensors do not relay the signal — mains-powered devices carry the network traffic, so batteries last for years
• A weak spot is easy to strengthen — just add a mains-powered device or a second Air gateway in another part of the building
• Signal quality for every device is visible in the configuration, so a weak point shows up during measurement, not after a month of use

Cost — what is cheaper, and when

In a finished building wireless is cheaper by a wide margin, because the whole cost of building work simply does not arise. In a building under construction it is the other way round: a radio device is usually more expensive than its wired equivalent, and a cable run at shell stage costs a fraction of one run after plastering.

That is why the same function can be cheap or expensive purely depending on when we are having the conversation.

The mixed setup — the most common in practice

In most projects we do not pick one or the other. The core of the system runs wired wherever the walls are open, and radio solutions fill in the places that are hard to reach or were added later: the garage, the attic, a garden building, an extra room. One server handles both worlds in the same set of logic.

Not sure which setup fits your property? Answer three questions in the configurator and we will suggest a scope. You can also check exactly what can be automated in either of them.