Let’s be honest, integrators would really prefer if their customers called them first before attempting to use their Google-fu skills to skim a few articles, read the steps on a WikiHow page, and give setting up their AV system the old college try.

Good wiring sets up a home for a better user experience. Residential integrators know poor AV wiring can cause even the nicest home to crumble under the weight of shoddy craftsmanship and can lead to system issues.

Sure, it’s almost always entertaining to walk into a home, head over to the rack closet, and slowly take in the monstrosity that waits inside, but it’s also a heck of a lot more work to fix the knots, cable nests, and seemingly endless lazy terminations than it is to start from scratch. Still, there’s nothing wrong with taking a look at some of these horrific displays of cable management and learn by example. 

Thanks to the miracle of the Internet, there’s a whole Reddit community filled with photos and stories of poor cable management integrators have noticed while on the job, so CE Pro wanted to share a slideshow of some of the most heinous rack installations and shoddy cabling we could find.

There are both residential and commercial jobs on display since poor cable management is unfortunately not relegated to the home. You’ll see giant networking racks overflowing with a waterfall of cables, inventive but ill-conceived strategies to control or otherwise hide products, nests of cables pinned behind closet doors, and much more.

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Click here to see the full gallery of wiring nightmares!