You mounted the TV. It's level, it's secure, it looks great — until your eye drops to the waterfall of cables pouring down the wall into a power strip. If you're searching how to hide TV wires, that waterfall is probably staring at you right now.
There are really only two families of fixes: cover the wires on the wall, or route them through it. One of those is cheap and quick. The other looks perfect but has a serious electrical-code rule attached that most DIY tutorials skip right past. As the crew that gets called to redo those tutorials around Jesup, let me walk you through all of it — including the part that keeps your insurance company happy.
Option 1: Cover Them — Raceways and Cord Covers
A raceway (or cord cover) is a slim plastic or metal channel that sticks or screws to the wall. Cables go inside, a lid snaps shut, and you paint the whole thing to match the wall.
The honest pros: cheap, fast, renter-friendly, zero holes in the wall cavity, and completely code-safe because nothing enters the wall. Painted well, a raceway on a flat wall is far more subtle than people expect.
The honest cons: it's still a visible bump. On a feature wall, under accent lighting, or across brick, it reads as exactly what it is. It also fills up fast — a TV, soundbar and console can outgrow a slim channel, and an overstuffed raceway with a bulging lid looks worse than tidy loose cables.
Our take: raceways are the right call for rentals, garages, budget jobs and temporary setups. For the living-room wall you look at every evening, keep reading.
Option 2: In-Wall Routing — the Clean Way
In-wall concealment means the cables travel through the wall cavity itself: one opening behind the TV, one down near the outlet, cables fished between them. Done right, you see a TV floating on a bare wall and nothing else. Here's what "done right" involves on a typical drywall job:
- Scout the cavity first. We check for studs, fire blocking, plumbing and existing electrical before cutting anything. Surprises live inside walls.
- Cut two clean openings — one hidden behind the TV, one lower on the wall — sized for proper wall plates, not ragged holes.
- Fish the low-voltage cables (HDMI, optical, ethernet) through the cavity with proper brackets and plates so cables aren't resting on raw drywall edges.
- Solve power the legal way — this is the step that separates pros from tutorials, and it gets its own section below.
- Leave a pull path. We route so a future cable — new console, upgraded HDMI standard — can be pulled without new holes.
The Code Part: Power Cords Do Not Go Inside Walls
Here's the rule that surprises almost everyone: you cannot run a TV's regular power cord inside the wall. Electrical code prohibits it. That factory cord is built for open air — it's not rated for the heat and conditions inside a wall cavity, and burying it creates a fire risk you can't see. If an in-wall power cord is ever implicated in a fire, you may also find your insurer very interested in who installed it.
"But the hole is right there and the cord fits" — yes, and it's still not allowed. The good news is the compliant fix is simple and invisible:
The compliant fix: an in-wall-rated power solution
Code-compliant power relocation kits exist for exactly this job. They place a recessed outlet behind the TV and a matching inlet plate down by your existing outlet, connected through the wall with in-wall-rated power cable designed and listed for that use. The TV's factory cord plugs into the new outlet behind the screen — so no appliance cord ever enters the wall, and every component inside the cavity is rated to be there.
Low-voltage cables are a different story. HDMI, ethernet and speaker wire are permitted in walls — that's literally our trade, it's why it's called low-voltage work — though best practice is cable with a CL2/CL3 wall rating on the jacket. Power and low-voltage also shouldn't share the same opening or run tight together, which is another detail the weekend tutorials tend to skip.
Want the Zero-Wire Look, Done to Code?
We mount the TV, fish the cables and install the compliant in-wall power kit in one visit. Free estimates, flat pricing, Southeast Georgia wide.
Call (236) 349-7751Fireplaces and Brick: The Hard-Mode Version
Everything above assumes drywall you can fish through. Brick and stone fireplace walls — common centerpieces in Southeast Georgia homes — don't have a cavity to fish. The wires have to go around, behind, or on the surface:
- Around: route through the framed wall beside the surround, then cross to the TV at the mount. Usually the cleanest result.
- Behind: some builds have a gap or chase between the masonry and the framing behind it. When it exists, it's gold.
- On the surface: a slim raceway color-matched to the mortar line. The honest fallback — and on textured brick it disappears better than on flat drywall.
Add the heat and anchoring questions and fireplace jobs are their own animal — we wrote up the full picture in our fireplace TV mounting guide.
When to Call a Pro (Honestly)
If it's a raceway on drywall, you genuinely don't need us — buy a paintable one, take your time, you'll do fine. Call a pro when the job involves any of these:
- Power relocation — the in-wall kit needs to be installed correctly to actually be compliant.
- Masonry, veneer or fireplace walls.
- Unknown wall contents — older homes around here can hide surprises worth not drilling into.
- Long runs — sending HDMI or ethernet to equipment in a closet or another room.
- A whole-house situation — if you're building or renovating, hiding wires room by room is backwards. Pre-wiring the home before drywall costs a fraction of retrofitting it after.
Wire concealment is included as an option on every KELV TV mounting job, and it's priced flat and upfront — you can see how it factors into the total in our TV mounting cost guide. One visit, one clean wall, zero cables in sight.