Hide Your Wires In Plain Sight with FlatWire’s Flat Wire
I think we all know that a ballin home theater system must be on display sans unsightly furniture. The problem is that usually means punching holes in your wall to hide the wires, which your landlord may not like, or not hiding the wires in which case you are no longer ballin. Well until we have wireless power, FlatWire is your solution to smash that catch 22. FlatWire is… flat wire that you mount on the surface of your wall then paint over.
FlatWire cover any type of wire you’d need including high-voltage electrical, low-voltage lighting, Cat5, 5e & 6 data cables, voice/data lines, coaxial cable, speaker wire, component video, HDMI & DVI. They are currently working on Fiber Optic and outdoor products.
These wires are very flexible allowing you to fold them over on themselves to make and degree turns you want. They then connect to your existing outlets or AV hookups via the FlatWire adapters.
The wires range from 4/1000 of an inch to 13/1000 of an inch, about the thickness of a cheap business card. You can install it yourself using their spray on adhesive. After you paint over it they would be "virtually" invisible, but I think you can image if you stuck a business card to your wall and painted over it, if your looking for it you’ll be able to see it. If you want to get really fancy you can use compound or drywall mud and taper the edges so they would be as undetectable as the joints in your walls.
The draw back is these wires are expensive… $37 for 25 ft of speaker cable, $110 for 20 ft of Cat 5 cable, and $130 for 20 ft of component video cable. Depending on your situation, the high cost could still be much less than a professional installation where they are cutting holes in your walls and rewiring your system, plus hard installs are not an option for some people who don’t own their pad.
For more details check out their installation guide.
46 Comments, Comment or Ping
dog the bounty hunter
its tape!
Apr 12th, 2008
CHRIS
Errm, it is less hassle just fishing the wires down the back of a drywall - you only have to fill a few holes then - imagine pulling the tape off the wall when you move and you have a big decoration job….
Apr 12th, 2008
E F Benson, Elmhurst, IL
and ugly tape at that
Apr 12th, 2008
Fernando
Yeah this idea sucks. If you have a landlord, you shouldn’t be messing with home theater systems. Get your priorities straight and buy a house so you can do whatever you want…
Apr 12th, 2008
Simply
Turn your home into a Faraday Cage!
Apr 12th, 2008
Moes
@Chris - Good Point!
@E F Benson - it doesn’t matter what the tape looks like, you paint over it and can’t see it knuckle head!
Apr 12th, 2008
jack
This guys an idiot LOL
Apr 12th, 2008
Samantha
I think this idea is great. Although my husband seems to think it will be horribly easy to break.
Would it be impossible to make the coating a simple color, like black or white, therefore to avoid having to re-decorate after you move out? As it is, my cables are strewn about my living room, as if the floor were made out of them, and even though it’s ugly, I would much prefer this to what I have now.
Apr 12th, 2008
true
@Samantha
There are no girls on the internet
Apr 12th, 2008
Mike
@SIMPLY: YES!
Apr 12th, 2008
Jean
Chris, Ef Benson, Fernando, Moes, you all sound like Samantha. On the other hand she is authentic…..
So you suck and this is a good idea.
Salut, bilouts.
Apr 12th, 2008
fenderflip
I ate poop once that had tape and wire in it.
Apr 12th, 2008
peggy
wow this is a pretty smart idea
Apr 12th, 2008
Emma
So, the landlord might not like you punching holes in the wall to hide the wires, but they’ll be ok with the holes left when you remove the drywall mud, in order to get at the expensive cables, which are essentially stickytaped to the wall?
I think I’m ok with them on the floor.
Apr 12th, 2008
linuxamp
This is a bad idea for any kind of signal cable such as DVI, HDMI, speaker or especially Ethernet cables. Those cables are TWISTED for a reason, to reduce the effect of electromagnetic interference (noise).
If you untwist the cable the noise from microwaves, florescent lighting, cordless and mobile phones etc. may become noticeable. The noise is seen or heard on video and audio cabling. In Ethernet, this basically leads to data corruption which means that shorter cables that work will appear to be slower (higher ecc rates). Longer distances may not work at all.
Apr 13th, 2008
seps1816
I dont know why everyone here is pretty much complaining about someting tht was made to make things easier for ya. Either way if you like it or your dont its still a step ahead which is the whole point anyways. And to the dumb ass who left that comment about how he once ate poop with wire and tape stick a gun in your mouth and do us all a favor cause someone like you shouldnt be allowed to have kids.
Apr 13th, 2008
Shawn C
I understand the wire and tape poop. I think it is meant to be funny, no? I mean, what else can you gather from that. I find your hostility to be unwarranted and ugly.
Apr 13th, 2008
Jach
@TRUE http://xkcd.com/322/
If you’ve got the kind of wires that ought to be out of sight and behind the wall, shouldn’t they stay that way? Neat idea though.
Apr 13th, 2008
Anon
AllEN! (String Theory) Sucks so bad.
Apr 13th, 2008
Philip
Looks interesting. It seems too expensive though and it isn’t braided. If there could be a flat, braided version that might work better.
Apr 13th, 2008
BasicSense
ok, aesthetics?
Apr 13th, 2008
Joe
Shawn C - you suck! Tape and poop was funny.
Apr 13th, 2008
lamess
I feel into the wall while drunk as a sailor and electrocuted my self on this exposted wire and am not writing from the grave. Beware living beings, there is danger everywhere.
Apr 13th, 2008
Liz
to Fenderflip: you can eat my poo! But seriously… I’m not kidding.
On a lighter note everyone here that is saying the tape is ulgy are idiots. You paint over it and you can’t see it!!! It is clear that natural selection is dead, long live the morons!
Apr 13th, 2008
monn
c’mon guys you don’t know jack!
that’s a great idea!
I’d install that right away to my home if possible.
Apr 14th, 2008
will
I would be worried about if it would stick out at all and when you paint over it when it meets a 90 degree angle if it will bend enough and not be rounded.
Apr 15th, 2008
That one guy
i dont know about you guys, but installing a new tv shouldnt have to involve paint
also, what if you install it, then decide to rearange everything because you buy a new bed?, or you have to move (like if you owned a house) and therefore ripped the tape off the walls (its expensive, im not leaving it behind) and have to repaint your walls because of the paint removed in the process.
overall i think its a neat idea, but it just doesnt work out so well
Apr 15th, 2008
Atomic Shrimp
It does seem to radically increase the chance of accidentally drilling into a wire (It’s only for signals, not power supply, right?) Also, isn’t it going to be better (well, worse - you know) at picking up interference?
I’d make it part of the decor, personally - leave all that lovely copper showing - make it a feature.
Apr 16th, 2008
Ghostworks
Hmm. It is kind of a cool idea.
Re: One demanding house ownership be a priority, get real. There’s no such thing as ownership in the US, just the illusion there of. Don’t assume your priorities should be everyone’s. I’d rather live more a nomad than be stuck at a place I bought.
Apr 18th, 2008
johnnyB
To be fair it would be easier to replace the skirting board with a higher one with the back of it routed out with the cables in, ps I’m an electrical engineer pmsl.
Apr 22nd, 2008
Austin
@ Chirs Just don’t move….ever
May 15th, 2008
Poop eater
I too ate poop with wire in it. Kind of hard to chew but not bad at all.
May 16th, 2008
James
This is about the worst idea that I have ever seen…..butt ugly
Jul 9th, 2008
chris
i reckon its a terrific idea. I don’t understand why everyone thinks it’s ugly. I find that that is a lovely shade of blue to paint your walls.
Jul 10th, 2008
A Physics Major
Aesthetics aside, I question the effectiveness of this product. the point of round wire is to minimize internal resistance. this may provide a huge resistance, and therefore create serious power loss. power loss would mean heat, and lining the walls with a radiator seems like a good way to burn an apartment down.
convenient though.
Jul 10th, 2008
Cal
It’s just 2 wires, if you wanted to do HDMI for example you would need 6 of those.
Jul 27th, 2008
p2man
This idea isn’t really good at all. It will reduce the quality of audio/video or any signal you are sending across. Plus it looks awful.
Jul 28th, 2008
pwnd
*** Don’t wiring specifications exist for a reason? Something tells me that this stuff is vulnerable to interference and bleeding. ***
L A M M EEEEE
L A A M M MM E
L AAAAA M MM M EEEE
L A A M M E
LLLLL A A M M EEEEE
Jul 30th, 2008
phal
Photoshopped !
Aug 1st, 2008
Niko
these are not NEC compliant for a reason they are dangerous, mud over it paint it and move out. the next person that moves in or lets say a year down the road you stick a nail through it. its a good idea used in safe moderation but we could never use it to be inspected.
Aug 3rd, 2008
LT
Doesn’t look very safe. I’d be surprised if any electrical codes allow this stuff.
Aug 6th, 2008
spuffler
not to mention that scraping these wires would expose power conductors to humans. flat is functional, but not addressing all the concerns we’ve learned over the past century. another case where form exceeds function to the detriment of the user.
Aug 6th, 2008
joe
physics major - the cross sectional area is what matters for the conductivity. the cross sectional shape doesn’t matter other than the fact it alters the total surface area, which, if larger, could promote the reception of spurious signals. the heat production is strongly related to the current, which would be extremely low for a signal wire and significantly higher for a speaker cable but still very low. also, if you’ve ever seen a lightning conductor, they are generally ribbon-shaped rather than round - this gets the most material (and hence the highest cross sectional area) in a relatively workable form.
oh yes, and what kind of tool signs their post physics major? surely your argument should carry enough weight regardless of what your major is? tool.
everybody who thinks it’d be dangerous, these wires are for signal transmission, not power transmission (excepting speakers, but they top out for home hifi systems at about 100W rms, which is small). they are not high voltage and so are not dangerous. in fact, drilling through them would probably not even affect the signal much, unless you cross-connected them with a screw or something. which of course is unlikely unless you have screws lying within the plane of your wall.
the only ill effect with a flat wire would be that you might be more likely to pick up additional signals which have a wavelength harmonically related to the width of the wire. in this case, the ribbons are on the order of centimetres across, which places them in the microwave region. i do not know what the intensity of such radiation in the home is, but i suspect it is very low despite the widespread use of wi-fi. the match would have to be extremely close to promote the pickup of these frequencies (think of adjusting the tuning on a radio), and in any case, both of the wires carrying the signal would be subject to the same interference and thus the overall effect would be null.
Aug 15th, 2008
Joe
“Southwire’s revolutionary FlatWire, the Invisible Wire SolutionT, has been approved for standard 120VAC electrical wiring applications in the 2008 National Electric Code (NEC). Under article 382 of the NEC, Concealable Non-Metallic Extension (CNE), the innovative surface-mount wiring technology that will present consumers with new opportunities in electrical wiring while greatly advancing safety.”
Did anyone even look at the manufacturer’s site?
Yeah, it’s expensive for a renter, but easier of an option than fishing cable behind the walls, especially if you’re going horizontal(through/past studs).. Just so long as you don’t leave it for the next person to find out accidentally(if it’s power transmission, this could be kind of a lot dangerous). So if you’re renting and plan on being there for a while, it’s not a bad idea. Even if you don’t paint over it, it’s nicer than messy cable strewn along the floor. (I’ve always just used a low profile wire and masking tape). If you own your house, you would be better off with a professional install. Cut a hole, install a box and outlet.
Sep 10th, 2008
Phill
Ok guys; this wiring is for Speaker wire - no voltage should go through this. It’s usually used for surround sound; ok? Further; it uses an adhesive backing - you won’t be able to take this stuff out. It wouldn’t be worth it. What you do is you use the adhesive backing on it, stick it to the wall, and then put a concealer over it and over it for a few coats. This makes it “blend” into the wall better. After that - you paint over it. You can also terminate it and make it come out of a wall connector. But again; this is primarily designed for speaker wire - it wouldn’t pick up that much interference for the short distance it’s going to run (under most circumstances) which means it wouldn’t be noticable to the quality of the audio. Thanks; peace.
Sep 24th, 2008
Shawn
I have this currently installed for my speakers only. I knew exactly where my speakers would be located. I knew where my Receiver would be, within 3 feet at least.
So I ran all the wires on top of the drywall. Spackled over it and painted it. I ran it along my base boards, up a corner, around my ceiling perimeter (behind the crown moulding), and across the ceiling in one place, all as appropriate to reach each specific speaker. I have noticed no interference or signal loss. The hardest part of the whole process was bending the wires into a corner and changing wire directions. Both events involved very precise compound 45^ and 90^ bends.
And frankly, while my microwave is 1300W, it happens to be ~20′ away and poses no threat, remember radiated energy from a point source decreases exponentially as distance is increased. Additionally, I don’t believe I can hear that frequency anyhow.
Oct 8th, 2008
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