A surprising amount of the advice we give assumes you own the walls. Run Ethernet, mount cameras under the eaves, put an access point on the ceiling. Renters read that and reasonably conclude none of it applies to them. It mostly still can. You just have to solve the same problems without a drill, and be a little smarter about what you buy so it moves out with you.
Cameras that don't touch the structure
The easiest win is realizing cameras do not need to be screwed to anything. Plenty of indoor cameras are freestanding: set one on a bookshelf covering the entrance hall, another on a kitchen cabinet watching the patio door, done. Battery-powered outdoor cameras open up more options, since many come with strap or clamp mounts that grip a railing, downspout, or fence post without a single hole.
For light cameras, heavy-duty adhesive strips and outdoor-rated mounting tape genuinely work, with two caveats from experience: clean the surface properly first, and check the strip's temperature rating, because summer sun on vinyl siding and February cold both defeat cheap adhesive. Put the camera under any available overhang and it will last longer than the tenancy.
One rule matters more than mounting: point cameras at your own entrance and your own space, not at shared hallways or a neighbour's door. That keeps you on the right side of both privacy law and your neighbours.
Flat cable and other ways around "no holes"
Wired connections are still better than wireless when you can get them, and renters have more options than they think. Flat Ethernet cable is a few millimetres thick and slips under carpet edges, along baseboards, and through the gap under interior doors. White cable raceway sticks to walls with adhesive backing, hides the run tidily, and peels off at move-out (peel slowly, use a hair dryer, and it usually takes no paint with it).
Window-pass-through cables exist for getting a wired camera or antenna feed outside without drilling: a flat ribbon section closes in the window frame. And if the unit happens to have old phone jacks or coax runs between rooms, those can sometimes be put to work carrying network instead. It is worth looking before you assume.
Mesh is the right call for renters
For whole-home Wi-Fi, this is the rare case where our usual advice flips. In an owned home we push hard for wired access points, for all the reasons in our mesh vs wired access points piece. In a rental, mesh wins: no cables through walls, nodes sit on shelves, and the whole system goes in a box when you move.
Buy it knowing the rules that make mesh work well. Place nodes in the open, not in cabinets. Keep each node within decent signal range of the next, which usually means one node per floor or every couple of rooms, not one at each far end of the apartment. If you can connect even two nodes with a flat cable along a baseboard, do it: a wired backhaul removes mesh's biggest weakness for the cost of one cable.
A two- or three-node mesh kit in the couple-hundred-dollar range covers most apartments and rented houses better than any single router pushed to a corner of the unit by wherever the internet enters.
What to actually ask a landlord
Some upgrades are worth a conversation rather than a workaround, and landlords say yes more often than renters expect, because the right upgrades raise the value of the unit.
Ask in writing, be specific, and offer that it stays. "May I have a licensed installer run one Ethernet cable from the living room to the bedroom, holes patched or hardware left in place at move-out?" lands very differently than "can I drill holes." A video doorbell that replaces an existing wired chime, a camera under an eave, or a proper wall-mounted access point are all small, professional jobs. Some landlords will even split the cost, since "wired internet in every room" shows up in the next listing.
Get the answer in writing, keep it with your lease, and never touch anything electrical or structural without that yes.
If you get a yes and want it done cleanly, or you want help designing a fully no-drill setup that just works, we do plenty of both for homes across our service area, rented ones included. Get in touch and tell us what your landlord agreed to.
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