Where to Put Security Cameras on a Burbank House

I get called out to plenty of existing camera systems, usually after something happened and the footage turned out to be useless. The failure is almost never resolution. It's placement — and placement is free to get right if you think about it before drilling.

The two principles that matter

Identification vs. observation

Every camera does one of two jobs, and most people accidentally buy eight of the wrong one.

Observation cameras sit high, cover a wide area, and tell you what happened: someone came down the driveway at 2:14 AM, walked to the side gate, and left four minutes later. Useful for understanding events.

Identification cameras sit lower, cover a narrow choke point, and tell you who it was: a face at recognizable resolution. This is what police and insurers can actually use.

The rule: at least one identification camera at every entry point, observation cameras for everything else. A property with eight observation cameras and no identification camera has recorded a lot of hooded silhouettes.

The funnel principle

There are only so many ways onto a property. Front path. Driveway. Side gate. Back gate. Alley. Maybe a low fence section. That's usually four to six places. Cover the funnels and you've covered the property. Cameras aimed at the middle of a yard mostly record cats and wind.

The height rule

This is the single most common mistake. People mount cameras at ten or twelve feet — up under the eave, out of reach, out of the way. At that height, looking down, you get the top of a head and a pair of shoulders. Faces are not recoverable from that angle.

For identification cameras: 7 to 8 feet, angled slightly down. High enough that it can't be casually grabbed, low enough that a face fills a usable part of the frame at ten to fifteen feet away. Yes, it's more reachable. That trade is worth making at one or two positions, because a camera nobody can identify anyone with isn't protecting you either.

For observation cameras: 9 to 12 feet is fine. Coverage is the goal, not faces.

The eight positions for a typical single-family house

Most Burbank single-family homes are covered properly by positions 1, 3, 4 and 5 — four cameras. Corner lots, homes with alley access, and properties with a detached garage or ADU want six.

Six placement mistakes

1. Pointing into the sun. A west-facing camera gets two hours of blown-out white every evening — exactly at the hours you care about. Check the sun path for each position, or mount under an eave that shades it.
2. Shooting through glass. An indoor camera aimed out a window produces IR bounce at night that renders the image useless. If you need to see outside, the camera goes outside.
3. Mounting too high. Covered above. It's the big one.
4. Aiming at open space instead of choke points. Motion alerts from a whole yard are constant and get ignored; motion alerts from a gate are meaningful.
5. Ignoring lighting. Most cameras have IR, but IR range is short and washes out close subjects. A motion light near an identification camera improves footage far more than a resolution upgrade.
6. Forgetting the camera itself. Someone who cuts power or grabs a camera should already be on a second camera. Cover your cameras with each other where you can.

California law, briefly

Wired or wireless for a Burbank house?

If you own the house: wired (PoE). One cable carries power and data, it records continuously to a local recorder you own, there's no subscription, and there's no battery to charge. Cable runs through the attic and out through the eave, so nothing shows on the wall face.

If you rent, or a position genuinely can't be cabled: wireless is a good answer and there's no shame in it. Just know you'll be charging batteries and probably paying for cloud storage to get useful retention.

What it costs

Labor runs $160–$280 per wired camera and $95–$160 per wireless camera in the Burbank area. A four-camera wired home system is typically $700–$1,200 in labor plus equipment; nationally, professionally installed systems average around $1,290 all-in and most land between $590 and $2,040.

Where money is wasted: 4K on every camera (you need it at identification points, not on the back fence), and subscriptions for storage a local recorder handles for a one-time $90. Where money is well spent: low-light performance, an identification camera at the front, and proper cable so nothing fails in three years.

The one thing to do before mounting anything

Walk your property at night. Not in the afternoon — at 9 PM, with the lights as they normally are. Look at where the shadows are, where someone could approach unseen, where a light already covers, and where you'd want to be able to see. Twenty minutes of that is worth more than any amount of spec comparison.

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