Systems and methods for partitioning radio spectrum in an AP to support a mixed client environment while maintaining efficient 802.11ax transmissions is provided. Clients in a zone may be categorized into 802.11ax and legacy clients, and those clients may further be categorized into a majority population and a minority population. Assignment of the minority and majority populations can be effectuated by considering the number of available channels to be assigned to each population of client devices, as well as steering load/cost and a client device's ability to be steered to another channel. Moreover, assignment of the minority and majority populations can take into account maintaining a particular client-channel density.