Optical metamaterials with a negative value of the refractive index can be fabricated by means of patterning techniques developed for microelectronics. One of those is a layered metamaterial, where the electric and magnetic response comes from coupled parallel subwavelength size wires. We simulate propagation of EM waves through such a metamaterial. Its properties depend on the density of pairs of nanowires oriented in parallel in one layer. There is a tradeoff between high transmittance and large negative refractive index value n. The smaller is the density of nanowires; 1° – the narrower the range of frequencies, where n is negative; 2° – the less negative is n; 3° – the higher is the transmission.