Aerials work great in lofts – Advice on a good indoor TV aerial

Now that I have successfully annoyed (didn’t want to use any terminology that would offend, probably a few other words going about) professional TV aerial installers the length and breadth of the country. Aerials do work fine in lofts, but the task should be taken with caution.

First things first, advice on a good loft aerial. No such thing in my opinion other than whether it can with stand the outside weather or not. These all singing all dancing set top aerials that amplify a signal into oblivion are useless. You may get away with it if you are near a transmitter but I’m going to point blank tell you to run a mile from them.

Now I have that off my chest we can start talking about installing TV aerials in lofts. You may want to do this for a multitude of reasons but the two most common in my experience are that there are no fixings available for an aerial outside or that you just think that they are god awful to look at.

Stopping short of a full on endorsement of loft aerial installations, there are situation where it just won’t work and often where it should be avoided here are items of consideration before you go ahead.

1) Is the loft foiled lined? If the answer is yes, then abandon what you are doing it won’t in there. The foil lining actually reflects the signal so it will never make it to the aerial.

2) All off the loft won’t necessarily be the same signal wise, you should spend some time running tests to identify the peak signal area. You should use you sixth sense to picture where the nearby tress and building are that may be in the direction that you are pointing the aerial. Or just go out and look! If you are mid, end of a terrace and you are pointing straight through a series of buildings it is usually best to go to the extreme side of the loft to avoid the effect the neighbouring buildings will have on the signal. This isn’t always the case however, I have in the past installed an aerial in a loft and have had enough signal to run 8 TV points without amplification! Please visit

3) You typically will have a weaker signal so higher gain aerials and amplifiers may often be required, not all the time though. Often I have actually achieved a better signal in a loft than I can outside, this is usually down to the building as the top of the loft can be higher than the chimney stack for example.

4) There is usually far more sources of interference in lofts, in situations like this the aerial should be installed away from these. Aerials with an integrated balun or a log periodic design should be used.

5) If it doesn’t work, go outside!

Now that you have my advice, give it a try, it most likely will work, it may even work better than outside, but bare in mind 95% of the time this isn’t the case.