A sleek, modern crate
Daniela Gorny, a supervising editor on Wirecutter’s home decor team, recommended using crates, either vintage finds from thrift stores or cheap IKEA options, to stash an unsightly router. Tracy Vence, a supervising editor on Wirecutter’s health and fitness team, personally uses the slightly more premium Hay Recycled Colour Crate, and we tested it to see how it affected Wi-Fi connectivity.
We found that the crate has plenty of room for both a router and a cable modem (if you have one), and feeding wires through the crate’s handles is easy. The grates on the walls of the crate are a bit too narrow to get an Ethernet connector through, and the router may still be a little visible through the slats, but the vents punching through the crate’s sides and its open top ensure excellent ventilation for your electronics.
When we tested the router inside the crate, the crate’s recycled polypropylene material had minimal effect on Wi-Fi signals; the router continued to stream 4K videos and serve fast downloads to laptops all over our test home.
A rustic wicker basket
Some Wirecutter staffers prefer to stash their routers in wicker baskets for a more rustic look. We tested an affordable, popular laundry basket from Target that’s large enough to hold a router and a modem at the same time. Since its sides are over 11 inches tall, it easily camouflaged our router, which is 6 inches high with its antennas extended. The wicker was somewhat stiff, but we slipped wires through its weave with a modicum of effort.
When we tested the router sitting in the wicker basket, the container had minimal to no effect on Wi-Fi signals. If you decide to hide your router in a wicker basket, refrain from placing anything like a drapey fabric or books on top, to let the router’s heat escape naturally.
A lidded bamboo box
Caroline Mullen, a staff writer on our organizing and cleaning team, hides her router in the IKEA Smarra box with lid. When Caroline hid her router in the Smarra, she had to cut a hole for the wires because of the box’s stiff bamboo weave. The box looks great with the lid closed and fit our router well, but it may be too snug to accommodate a larger modem too.
The enclosed basket had some effect on performance, particularly when we thrashed the router with busy traffic from multiple laptops at the same time. The router felt warm after testing, which suggests that overheating was possible and could account for the slight slowdown. That said, the performance degradation we measured was minor: You’d have to be timing your downloads with a stopwatch to see the difference.
