Rather than storing a spare key under a plant pot or mat, the best and most secure option is to use a key safe. They are designed for properties that need to be accessed by a range of visitors such as a holiday, Airbnb or rental property to care workers checking in on the elderly.
Depending on your requirements, you may require a key safe that’s police approved. If that’s the case, there are limited, premium options available but if you do invest, you’ll have complete peace of mind that it has been fully tested with proven results.
As you can see in the image above, we installed the Supra C500 to one of our properties and we would highly recommend it. However, we have also used a range of other key safes (electronic and mechanical) over the years to base our recommendations on.
Our hand-picked selection of key safes features top-performing models chosen through our first-hand experience with mechanical and electronic safes, testing and thorough research.
Our Top Picks At A Glance:
How The DIY Works Team Tests & Rates The Key Safes
As we own multiple Airbnbs and holiday lets, key safes have been essential for us and they are found on many of our properties. This has meant that we’ve had the pleasure of testing a whole range of key safes over the years to best suit the property.
With regards to the installation, most are relatively easy to install but if you want to gauge an idea of how it’s done, we created a detailed key safe installation guide that walks you through the process (we install the SUPRA C500).
During our on going testing of key safes, we analyse their build quality, installation difficulty, internal size, ease of use, design and any additional features.
Below are some photos we took of a recent key safe that we installed and tested. As you can see in the photos, it has a weatherproof cover that easily flips down to reveal the lock. After entering the required digits to access it, you can then turn the dial to unlock the key safe and gain access to the keys inside.
This particular lock has a police-approved design and is also relatively easy to use too, which is the reason why we highly recommend it within our roundup. In terms of why we installed it, the keys inside are used to gain access to our Airbnb property but it can be used for so many other applications.
If you would like to see a video of how a key safe works, below is a video that we posted on our YouTube channel that shows us testing our top recommendation (SUPRA C500). As you can see in the video, the design is very sturdy and it’s very easy to use to gain access to the keys.
To keep up our commitment to reviewing and testing the latest key safes (for this article), we are continually testing the latest offerings from top brands in the UK. This means that when we notice a brand has released a new and improved key safe, we will attempt to buy it and put it to the test (where applicable).
As well as our testing and experience of using multiple key safes, we also based our recommendations on the latest research and several factors. The factors that we took into consideration included the lock type, size, ease of installation, police approval, warranty and value. These will all need to be considered if you are in the market for a key safe.
