Custom Safe Buying Tips

A safe can do far more than simply protect your valuables. When properly configured, a safe provides a great opportunity to organize and optimize your life.

To fully capitalize on what your new safe offers, it's essential to stop thinking of your future safe as the thing you will store your valuables in and instead treat the safe as a highly configurable personal organizer…that protects what's in it.

A good safe can be equipped with file drawers, jewelry drawers, necklace racks, watch winders, DVD drawers, gun racks, photo drawers, equipment drawers…the list is very extensive.

Rather than having your precious items spread throughout your home and losing precious time tracking an item down whenever it goes missing, consolidate and organize. Take this opportunity to compile a list of the important items you commonly use and then consider how you want to organize these items in a way that works best for you. Now you can search out a quality safe that best accommodates your organizational plan.

When requesting a custom safe for a specific space, leave a 1" gap on all sides to ease the installation process and to provide a buffer for measurement tolerances.

When viewing dimensions provided by Brown Safe Manufacturing, the depth of the safe will include handle, lock, and hinges. These items normally account for 1¾" of the overall depth.

Try to provide enough room outside the safe for the door to open to 135°. This allows the inner door elements to swing clear, providing full, unobstructed access to the safe's contents and maximizing the amount of available interior space.

This holds especially true for safes with drawers, as a 135° door swing allows the drawers to fill the entire horizontal range of the safe's interior.

If the safe will be in a cabinet or the safe door will be stopped by a wall, you'll need to specify a door swing of 90°. This means the drawers will be narrowed 1" to 2" to prevent them from being blocked by the door.

You should also consider which side of the safe you'll want the hinge on to allow for the most convenient access.

All too often, safes go unused when they are located too far away to be conveniently accessed. Many times a new safe buyer will overthink the planned location for their safe, locating it in some cleverly concealed location or disguising the safe behind false doors or walls. While concealing your safe is fine, don't do this at the cost of overall convenience or the safe will likely fall out of use over time. It's far better to store your commonly used valuables in a not-so-hidden safe than to have these items left out for easy pilfering. Rather than out thinking the burglar along with yourself, rely on the safe to perform its job of protection and place it where it's likely to get the most use. If your home is burglarized, a well-built burglary safe will faithfully protect your contents.