Frequency channels are a scarce resource in the ISM bands used by IEEE 802.11 WLANs. Current radio resource management is often limited to a small number of nonoverlapping channels, which leaves only three possible channels in the 2.4GHz band used in IEEE 802.11b/g networks. In this paper we study and quantify the effect of adjacent channel interference, which is caused by transmissions in partially overlapping channels. We propose a model that is able to determine under what circumstances the use of adjacent channels is justified. The model can also be used to assist different radio resource management mechanisms (e.g. transmitted power assignments)