How Many Cameras Does Your Business Actually Need?
The honest answer is usually fewer cameras than most people expect — placed correctly. Here's how to think about it before getting a quote.
Start with entry and exit points
Every door someone can walk through — front entrance, back door, staff entrance — gets a camera before anything else. This is non-negotiable for both retail and office premises, and it's usually where an incident review starts.
Cover the money, not the whole room
For retail, the till point matters more than blanket coverage of the shop floor. One well-placed camera on a register, angled to catch both the cashier and customer side, is worth more than three wide-angle cameras covering empty aisles.
Small retail store (under 100m²)
- 1 camera at the entrance
- 1 camera at the till point
- 1 camera covering the stockroom/back door
Three cameras is often genuinely enough for a small store — the mistake most owners make is over-buying cameras and under-thinking placement.
Office (single floor, under 15 staff)
- 1 camera at main entrance
- 1 camera at any secondary/fire exit used regularly
- 1 camera covering reception or the area with valuable equipment
Larger premises or warehouses
This is where a proper site survey earns its cost — cable runs, blind spots, and lighting conditions vary enough that a generic camera count stops being useful. This is also where PTZ (pan-tilt-zoom) cameras start making sense for covering larger open areas with fewer units.
Don't skip the NVR/DVR sizing conversation
More cameras means more storage needed for footage retention. It's worth deciding upfront how many days of footage you actually need to keep — 7, 14, or 30 days changes the recorder and storage requirements significantly.
