There is a power strip laying on the floor next to my bed.

White one, on the carpet, half behind the nightstand. A pink cable runs across it. Two chargers are stacked on top of each other because there are not enough open plugs.

I build houses for a living. Eighty four of them. And that is what is on my bedroom floor.

Here is why. Our house was a remodel and we did not open the walls in the master. So the outlets are exactly where somebody put them, exactly the spacing the code asks for, and not one of them is anywhere I can reach from the bed.

The electrician did not do anything wrong. That is the entire point of this issue.

Code limits how far any point along the qualifying wall space can be from a receptacle. In a typical bedroom, that can allow as much as twelve feet between receptacles. It is a spacing rule, it is a good one, and it exists so you are not running cords across a room.

It has never once asked where your bed goes.

So you get outlets spaced correctly, the plan passes, and the electrician has done exactly what was required. Then the bed lands, and two of those outlets are directly behind the headboard where nothing will ever be plugged in again.

The code makes sure an outlet is nearby. It does not make sure you can reach it.

This is the part that costs nothing and nobody offers.

An outlet at standard height, behind a nightstand, sits below the top of the nightstand. To use it you either move the furniture or you reach around behind it in the dark and feel for it.

Have them run those two up six to eight inches higher than standard.

That is the whole ask. It still sits behind the nightstand where nobody sees it, and that part matters, because a plug and a knot of cords showing above the nightstand looks worse than the problem it fixes. It is just near the top of the nightstand now instead of down by the baseboard. You can get a hand back there and find it without moving furniture or feeling around on the floor in the dark.

Same outlet. Same wire. Same box. The only thing that changed is somebody wrote a number on a plan before the electrician showed up.

Switches.

Almost every bedroom gets one switch, at the door, for the overhead light. That is it. That is what is on the plan and that is what gets wired.

Ask for the overhead to be switched from both sides of the bed as well.

Think about what the single switch at the door actually means. You get in bed, the overhead is on, and somebody has to get back up and walk across the room. Every night. For as long as you live there. Most people solve it by never using the overhead at all and lighting the whole room with lamps, which means you paid for a light fixture you do not turn on.

And if you are putting in wall sconces or reading lights, put a second switch beside it so those are separate. If you read at night that is the switch you will actually use.

Moving or adding an outlet at rough in: roughly $80, while the electrician is standing there with the wall open.

Raising it six to eight inches: nothing. It is a mark on a plan.

After drywall: cut the wall open, run the wire, patch, tape, texture, paint. Or you do what I did, and you buy a power strip.

Before the electrician starts, standing in the framed bedroom:

"Where is the bed going? I want one on each side behind the nightstands, run up six to eight inches higher than standard, and I want the overhead switched from both sides of the bed."

If they tell you the bedroom is already to code, they are right, and it is not the point:

"I know. I am not asking for more outlets. I am asking for two of them to be somewhere I can reach."

If you want to hand your electrician the exact part instead of describing it, this is the one. Leviton dual USB-C outlet. Two USB-C ports at 30 watts each, plus a normal 15 amp tamper resistant receptacle in the same box, so the two beside your bed do both jobs.

Thirty watts is the number that matters. It charges a phone fast and it will keep a tablet going, which is the thing the older USB outlets never could. And it is C, so it is not obsolete in two years.

Amazon affiliate link. If you buy through it I make a few bucks and it costs you nothing.

Same question as last week, because a lot of you are new since then. It decides what I write next.

If you know somebody whose electrician starts next week, forward this to them today. Outlet locations get decided in about an hour, usually without the owner standing there, and then they are decided forever.

And if one person signs up off your link, I will send you the full cost breakdown of the first house I ever built. Every line I tracked, 2017 prices, which are going to hurt to look at. It is not for sale and it never has been.

That is it for this week.

Hit reply and tell me one room where you already know the outlets are going to be wrong. I answer these myself.

Jon | Built With This