Floor, In-Floor and Wall Safes: Which Style is Best for You?

Most people purchase a safe to protect personal valuables from fire or theft. Your circumstances, as well as personal preferences, determines your needs in what type of safe you need. There are a lot of safes out there, especially if you take into account all the small and portable safes. But when it comes to the larger home and gun safes, there are three main styles based upon where the safe is placed. Those three styles are floor, in-floor and wall safes.

When I think of wall safes, I think of TV or movies and safecracking. Such as Jennifer Garner in Alias having to steal the priceless Rambaldi artifact from the bad guy's office safe. In movies, the safe seems to usually be hidden behind a picture, like in the Thomas Crown Affair, so that may not be the best way to disguise wall safe since that would be the first place any movie goer would look.

Wall safes are usually smaller than floor safes, are not very difficult to install, and provide convenient storage for important items. Of course, if installed in dry wall, it is not very secure from burglars since they could just remove the entire safe and carry it off to open else where. If you need security and not just fire protection (which you probably want, or why would you conceal your safe in a wall? Just because its cool?) then you need to install the safe with concrete in a concrete, block or brick wall.

Floor safes are the style seen a lot in local sports and general stores. These are safes that, as you can probably guess, are designed to sit on the floor. They are normally quite heavy and are bolted down, usually to the floor but often to a wall also, or two walls if the safe is placed in a corner. Both the weight and the bolts are huge deterrents to burglars. If you are not placing your floor safe on a ground floor, you will want to make sure that the floor can support the weight of the safe. The last thing you want is your safe to break through the floor and fall to the basement or apartment bellow you!

In its own weird way, an in-floor safe is a combination of floor and wall safes. You use the floor instead of the wall, and you place the safe inside of it. These types of safes often do not meet UL construction guidelines to earn a UL fire rating, but still are fairly safe against fire and burglary if installed wisely. The best place to put an in-floor safe is in the corner of your concrete basement floor. The basement because it is the lowest floor in your house. Fire rises, so the safe won't get as hot as quickly as a safe higher up in your house. This gives the extra fire protection desired and compensates for the lack of in-floor safes not meeting UL standards. The concrete is best for the same reasons wall safes are more secure in concrete - harder to carry off. And finally, in the corner because if someone does try to break into your safe, it makes it a lot more uncomfortable for the thief, it is harder to access from all sides and therefore takes longer to break into.

Any of these three styles of safes is great for protecting your valuables, you just have to decide what works best for you. If you are building a home, then it is an opportune time for installing in-floor or wall safes, but these can be installed in any home at any time as long as you meet the manufactures guidelines. So don't be deterred and rule out these options. Check out all options before choosing your safe.