Router suggestions for at-home wifi roaming solution

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

Hi all, I am looking to install 2 dumb access points at my house that will be configured with fast roaming. Today I took delivery of 2 cheap APs from Amazon and quickly realized that you can not flash OpenWrt on an access point. The cheap APs don't have roaming or mesh, therefore I am returning them and need to get actual routers that are compatible with OpenWrt.
My problem is the following: access points are usually meant for an enterprise setting, therefore they look really nice and minimal mounted to a ceiling/wall. Consumer grade routers are rarely that. I need to find a router that has a minimal design and will look good mounted on a white ceiling. Does anyone know of such a device? Only real technical requirement is dual band wifi (802.11ac wave 2). But other than that I am just looking for something aesthetically pleasing that will not stick out like a sore thumb on a wall/ceiling.
Any kind of suggestions and comments greatly appreciated!

EDIT: I realize i might have made a mistake in my OP. Am I correct in assuming that MESH is a solution which requires proprietary software to work, while ROAMING is something that the client is responsible for? Can all APs make use of roaming as long as the SSID is the same? Do I not need to return my APs afterall?

I am very lost on this topic, help greatly appreciated!

2

Check out the TP-Link EAP series.

You can, but not on all of them.

Not really, but those addons might improve the roaming.

With the proper setup, they should be.

Are they supported by OpenWrt ?

3

No, they are not. they are both Tenda i24-s.

My original intention was to flash OpenWrt on both APs since I thought roaming was something that can exclusively be achieved through OpenWrt or other, more expensive mesh systems. I am now learning that roaming is actually fully dependent on the client, as long as the host SSID and other paramaters are identical between the APs. Is this correct?

4

The APs can help the client make the roaming decision.

If you have two APs with the same SSID, the client won't migrate on its own, it'll stay with the 1st AP it connected to, as long as it's within radio range.

5

So if my APs don't have any mention of roaming in the documentation and are not OpenWrt compliant, they are useless to me as roaming wifi hosts? Do I need to specifically get devices with roaming support?

edit: I think I understand now. I believe "seamless roaming" is the term im looking for in my devices, if I want good roaming out of the box on default firmware.

This still leaves me with my original question, about where to look for a nice looking OpenWrt compatible wifi router.

6

@frollic Thank you for helping me understand this issue. I will now close this topic and open a new one with a clear, non-confusing question.

7

That depends on the feature set they come with, but for commercial grade products, I would expect some kind of central software handling the roaming.

For OpenWrt, no.

That's probably not happening, unless you buy some consumer grade, multi node, mesh solutions.

Asus' aiMesh beeing the only exception.

8

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