Storing your valuables or important items within a home safe is the best way to protect them for long periods. Not only do they provide an extra layer of security from theft but many even offer flood and fire protection. Whether you only require a small safe for a few important documents or an ultra-secure large safe for all your valuables, there is plenty to choose from.
However, before choosing the first safe you like the look of, it’s crucial that you choose one that provides the right level of protection. This is because most UK insurance companies require a value of the stored contents, which is used against the Eurograde scale for insuring it. Therefore, many of our safes within our roundup have either been approved by the police or AIS (Association of Insurance Surveyors) for complete peace of mind.
To assist you in selecting the right home safe, our handpicked selection lists top-performing designs, chosen based on our first-hand experience using a range of safes. Our testing and up-to-date research further ensure the quality of our recommendations.
Our Top Picks At A Glance:
How The DIY Works Team Tests & Rates Home Safes
A secure safe is an essential product that we’ve had plenty of experience using at home as well as at the DIY Work’s office. At our personal home, we mostly store cash, watches and other important documents whereas at the office, any expensive products we are currently testing are stored within the safe.
Two safes (as shown in the images below) that we are currently using are the SentrySafe and Securikey safes. At home, we are using the Securikey and it’s mounted to a concrete floor whereas the larger SentrySafe is used in the office.
However, to keep up with our commitment to reviewing and testing the latest home safes (for this article), we are putting other options through their paces. During our testing, we look at the safe’s construction quality, functionality, provided hardware, ease of use and how secure they are.
As you can see in the images below, the Securikey Mini Vault that we recently tested is built to the highest of standards and is very secure thanks to its bulky locking bolts and high-quality mounting bolts.
When researching the latest home safes to test, we ensure that they are worthy of testing in the first place. For example, we like to test those that offer superior protection (as shown by the approval stickers on the Securikey safe in the image below) as well as safes that are suitable for those on a tight budget. Therefore, over the years, we’ve tested a wide variety of safes and our recommendations listed above cover those that we’ve rated as the best for certain categories.
As well as our experience and testing of multiple home safes, we also based the above recommendations upon hours of research and multiple factors. Some of the factors that we took into consideration included the type, capacities available, build quality, locking bolts, police and AIS approval, mounting options, additional functions and value for the money.
