Whether you’re looking for wiring, pipes, or just the usual stud, one of these expert-approved models is designed to help you locate it.
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If you’re hanging or mounting heavy items on your walls, such as mirrors or mounts for flat-screen TVs, you need to attach them to a stud—the wooden or metal beams that make up your home’s framing. Since these studs are hidden behind your drywall or plaster, a stud finder saves you a ton of time (and potential wall damage), ensuring you drill right into the sturdy support every time.
Some stud finders feature other helpful tools like deep scanning and AC wire detection. These prevent you from hitting a pipe or wire when hanging something up—expensive mistakes when you make them. That doesn’t mean stud finders work like X-ray vision, though—there’s a lot going on in walls, and it’s hard, despite advances in tech, for any device to determine what’s a pipe and what’s a wire, for instance.
We put a selection of stud finders through their paces on a wall of our own making and walls in real homes. We tested several options to find the best stud finders for home and commercial use, whether you just need a hand hanging up your new shelves or you’re hoping to avoid damage while you work within the drywall.
Magnetic stud finders catch on the fasteners that attach drywall to studs as you wave a magnet along the wall. Since fasteners often sit over a foot apart on a single stud, locating one with a magnetic stud finder may take longer, but this option is affordable and quite simple to use.
Accuracy is not a magnetic stud finder’s best attribute. Because these tools rely on the fastener actually being driven into the stud, if a builder missed the stud, so will the magnetic stud finder. In commercial construction, where metal studs are standard, magnetic stud finders are typically more reliable.
Their counterpart, the electronic stud finder, sends out a signal from a sensor and then reads the signal that bounces back. When the signal changes, the stud finder beeps or flashes to let you know it’s found a stud.
Some electric stud finders also identify metal pipes and electrical wires. The most advanced stud finders use technology like ground-penetrating radar, which creates a subsurface image.
For most occasional home uses, like hanging pictures or bathroom mirrors, a magnetic stud finder gets the job done effectively. However, if you’re hanging heavier items or anything that bears weight, like a shelf or a bike rack, electronic stud finders ensure you’re more precisely on target.
Most stud finders are made of plastic with magnets or electronic components inside. While plastic is lightweight and reasonably durable, those with electronics are vulnerable to moisture and impact damage if they get rained on or dropped accidentally. Rare-earth magnets (with no plastic) are practically indestructible, and their smooth surface better prevents scuffs on your wall during use.
While all stud finders are relatively small, some are more compact than others. As a carpenter in New York City, I found rare-earth magnets more convenient than other types, simply because they transport in my pocket or tool bag pouch without taking up much space or adding excess weight. Just keep in mind that their extra-small size makes them a choking risk around small children.
Larger stud finders tend to provide more functionality though, so if you plan on using your stud finder around your house—and storage and portability are less important—go with a larger model that fits all your needs.
For our evaluations, we built a four-by-eight-foot wall from common materials: wood and metal studs; drywall; copper, black, pex, and PVC pipes; and nonmetallic sheathed cable. Then, we scanned the wall with each of the stud finders.
All functioned as expected when it came to detecting the studs, but we quickly found that some of them didn’t work as advertised. We also took the stud finders to two homes—one, a mid-1800s house with lath and plaster, and the other, a 1970s tract house—for real-world testing.
We found several stud finders that worked great and used our DIY and carpentry expertise to determine which stud finders were best for various uses. We also recommend a few that we haven’t had a chance to test yet, but we think these are promising based on product specs and user reviews.
For this update, Popular Mechanics contributor Alex Rennie (a former residential and commercial carpenter) added several options based on his own personal experience mounting shelving units, TVs, and wall-mounted office monitors.
Bosch’s GMS120 is more than just a stud finder (though it located the centers of those we tested it on within an eighth of an inch). It also detects live AC wiring, metal objects, plastic pipes filled with water, and even rebar in concrete. This Bosch unit features audible tones, an illuminated ring around the sensor area, and an LCD screen—and all three work in concert, guiding you toward your target in as close to a foolproof way as possible without cutting into your wall and seeing for yourself.
The ring turns red when it’s over a stud, while the screen provides live-wire alerts and displays a bull’s-eye to indicate the stud’s center. Though the GMS120 didn’t find wiring in our wall, it picked it up fairly accurately in the test houses.
If you only need to find a stud, Craftsman’s Hi-Vis Stud Sensor does exactly that. Simple and effective, this sensor locates the edges of wood and metal studs. Pressing the button on the side, we slid it slowly along the wall, keeping an eye on the indicator. When it lit up, we were at the edge of a stud. That indicator stayed on until we passed the other edge. Then, we slid the unit back over the stud to confirm and marked the edges before pinpointing the center. The tool consistently found studs under drywall up to 3/4-inch thick in our testing.
This Hart Professional instantly locates wood and metal studs, and multiple LEDs detect and track where objects are so users can avoid wires and pipes. It tracks each object with lights that move with the device as you glide it against a wall. Red indicates studs, and yellow shows the location of live wires.
The display shows the full width of objects with a max depth of 1.5 inches, and a built-in pencil holder helps you make marks efficiently and accurately. While we haven’t tested this one ourselves, various consumers say this Hart device is one of the best stud finders they’ve used, rivaling premium options with its nine sensors. It doesn’t detect studs in plaster walls, but at this price, it’s a solid value with plenty to offer.
For finding studs, things don’t get much simpler than the StudBuddy. Using it, we effortlessly located nails, screws, or metal studs by sliding it in an “S” pattern, back and forth on a wall. Two strong neodymium magnets caused the StudBuddy to snap to ferrous fasteners or studs when we got within about three-quarters of an inch of them.
Sliding it up or down quickly confirmed additional hits and the location and direction of studs. We found it worked even better on metal studs because fewer confirmation “hits” were required. The StudBuddy also responds to other ferrous metals in the wall, like ductwork or electrical boxes—so scanning to confirm stud orientation is important.
Capable of detecting metal fasteners behind 5/8-inch drywall, this magnetic stud finder perfectly navigates delicate wall coverings. My favorite feature of this choice is its spherical shape, which, unlike larger, flatter stud finders, creates minimal contact with your drywall. This minimizes the chances of any scratches or scuffs—common with stud finders that you glide across the wall. The looped plastic handle grips easily for you to swing the magnet freely. This is also an especially durable tool—one you don’t have to worry about damaging when you toss it into a toolbox or backpack alongside any heavier-duty tools or sharp metal fasteners.
The powerful Zircon A200 analyzes walls with three scan modes. In our testing, it found studs, iron and copper pipes, and live AC electrical wires in our wall. It was also very reliable and accurate, detecting studs and indicating their centers by projecting a red arrow on the wall. When we passed over live wires, the screen displayed an icon which indicated electricity was running through them.
While using this finder in dedicated metal-scan mode, we found it differentiated between metal plumbing pipes and wood studs. It was a little trickier, however, if metal studs were present, but knowing the stud spacing helped us sort things out.
In deep-scan mode, the A200 didn’t pick up PVC pipes in the wall unless they had water in them. We differentiated between pipes and studs by toggling between stud scan and deep scan. And the A200 presented all this information clearly on its illuminated screen.
Craftsman’s center-finding unit has LEDs to indicate scan status and guide you to the center of the stud—orange ones light up when you’re over the stud, and red ones indicate when you hit the center. Scanning slowly in one direction, past the center, and then back got us accurate results over 1⁄2- and 3⁄4-inch drywall.
The AC-detection mode was vague, indicating an area three to four inches wide when it picked up the wiring. But repeated passes allowed us to determine the wiring’s path. In standard scan mode, the Craftsman located some copper pipe, which was odd, but the pipe was too narrow to be a stud and the device never registered a center.
Similarly, it detected black pipe in metal mode. (Note that although it located the pipes, the stud finder couldn’t, nor was it designed to, identify them as such.) Still, these readings help you identify objects in the wall you may want to be careful around.
I found rare-earth magnets like these invaluable while working as a carpenter and used their ultra-powerful attraction to detect deep-down fasteners. With no moving parts—this is just a small metal disc—you simply slide the magnet across the wall until you feel it drawn toward metal components beneath. My favorite part of using magnets like these is that unlike larger, bulkier options, they’re less likely to accidentally scuff your wall. A trick I’ve used is to hot glue one of these magnets to the end of a piece of dental floss, hold it by the floss, and slowly move it across the wall. This shows you any minor changes in the magnet’s direction that otherwise might not be felt through your fingers. The main drawback to using magnets alone is that they don’t differentiate between metal components like more advanced digital detectors.
With 13 sensors—each corresponding to a bright LED—this electronic stud finder expertly indicates even the outside edges of a stud. By pushing a single button, it provides you with a clear picture of a stud from right edge to left and from top to bottom, which gives you the confidence necessary to screw into its center. This unit also automatically adjusts to the depth of the drywall—up to 1.6 inches—and requires no calibration to get started. Unlike magnetic options, this one requires AA batteries (which are not included), but that’s a fine trade-off considering the additional information it provides.
Most studs are spaced at 16-inch intervals—find one, and the next stud should be about that same distance in either direction. Changes in spacing usually happen near the ends of walls or doors and windows.
If your stud finder seems to be picking things up between the studs, it could be detecting metal or plastic plumbing components, electrical boxes or wiring, or metal ductwork. To combat this, scan above and below the point to ensure it continues to the floor or ceiling. If it doesn’t, it could be something other than a stud.
Electrical wires usually run vertically on the side of a stud and sometimes horizontally between outlets. If there are light fixtures, switches, and outlets on a wall, you can make an educated guess as to where the wires might be.
Pay attention to where the kitchen and bathrooms are, too—water supply and waste pipes for the second floor are often found in walls on the first floor, below sinks, tubs, or showers. (Pro tip: If your basement is unfinished, you can go down there to see where the pipes go up on the ceiling.)
Alex Rennie is a freelance writer who specializes in the Home Improvement, DIY, and Tool space. As a former residential and commercial carpenter, Alex uses his hands-on experience to write practical buying guides, how-to articles, and product reviews. His work has also appeared in Business Insider's Insider Picks, and before his writing career, he was a full-time carpenter living in New York City. There, he worked as part of a team designing, building, and installing large furniture pieces, as well as performing a variety of home repair and maintenance projects. Alex currently lives in Los Angeles, CA, and spends his free time exploring the beaches and mountains with his fiancé and their dog Louie.
Brad Ford has spent most of his life using tools to fix, build, or make things. Growing up he worked on a farm, where he learned to weld, repair, and paint equipment. From the farm he went to work at a classic car dealer, repairing and servicing Rolls Royces, Bentleys, and Jaguars. Today, when he's not testing tools or writing for Popular Mechanics, he's busy keeping up with the projects at his old farmhouse in eastern Pennsylvania.
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