In short
Camera count comes from scenes, not square metres: every entrance and exit, every point where money or stock changes hands, the approaches outside, and the blind corners inside. Counted that way, a small commercial unit typically lands at four to eight cameras and a warehouse with a yard at eight to sixteen.
The count matters less than what each camera must prove. One camera that identifies a face at the door is worth three that watch a car park in general.
How many cameras is always the first question, because it feels like the question that sets the budget. It is actually the last question, and any installer who answers it before walking the site is quoting for a guess.
The honest route to the number is short, and you can do most of it yourself with a notepad before anyone visits. It starts with what each part of the site needs the footage to do, because that decides everything else.
Why floor area is the wrong starting point
Two sites of identical size can need wildly different systems. A 500 square metre open warehouse might be covered convincingly by six cameras; a 500 square metre office with corridors, fire doors, a server room and a rear yard might need ten. Walls, sightlines and doors set the count, and none of them appear in the floor area.
The other reason area misleads: it treats all footage as equal. It is not. Footage exists on a sliding scale from observing that something happened, to recognising a person you already know, to identifying a stranger well enough for the police to act. Each step up needs more pixels on the subject, which means a tighter view, which means more cameras for the same space.
Count scenes, not spaces: the walk-through method
Entrances and exits, every one of them
Each door a person can enter or leave through earns a camera positioned to identify a face, not the top of a head, which is a mounting-height decision as much as a camera one. Fire exits count. This list alone usually sets a third of the total.
Where money or stock changes hands
Tills, trade counters, goods-in, the stockroom door, the safe. These are identification scenes too, and they are also where footage most often gets used, not against strangers but to settle disputes: the delivery that was signed for, the refund that was not.
The outside: approaches, yards and parking
Outside scenes are usually observation scenes: you need to know a vehicle entered the yard at 2am and which way it went, and for gates and barriers a plate camera does a specific job the general view cannot. Long yards need the honest infrared conversation, because a camera rated for 20 metres will not cover 40.
Inside: corridors, blind corners and the things worth stealing
Interior circulation needs fewer cameras than people expect, because corridors funnel movement past a small number of points. Cover the funnels, not every metre of corridor.
Then the recorder, with headroom
The channel count on the recorder should be the camera count plus at least a quarter again, because systems grow, and a recorder swap is the most annoying way to add one camera.
Typical counts, honestly bracketed
Counted the scene way, sites tend to land in familiar ranges: a small shop or unit at three to five, a typical office at four to eight, a warehouse with a yard at eight to sixteen, and multi-building sites beyond that. Ranges, not quotes, because the building always has an opinion.
What the ranges are useful for is smell-testing a quote. A sixteen-camera proposal for a four-door office deserves the question what does each of these prove, and so does a four-camera quote for a site with nine entrances.
When fewer cameras is the better system
More cameras mean more to maintain, more to store and more screens nobody watches. A system where every camera has a named job beats a bigger one where half the views are almost the same car park. Where a quote can come down by cutting a camera whose scene is already covered, we will cut it; the budget is better spent on getting the entrance cameras right and lighting the yard properly.
How Core Comms can help
We design and fit business CCTV installation across Manchester, the North West and West Yorkshire, and every system starts with the walk-through above done properly: a free site survey that names what each camera must prove, then a fixed itemised quote camera by camera. The same DBS-checked engineers handle CCTV installation for homes and businesses alike.
If you are trying to put a number on a site, talk to our team or call 0330 838 1000 and we will walk it with you.
Ready to fix your office network?
Talk to Core Comms about a network review and we'll help you get to the root of the problem.
Get in touch