If you have anything in your home that needs to be kept protected, a safe is the perfect solution. However, if this is the first time that you are buying a safe, you must probably be very confused. Safes are made for people who are very security conscious and there is a lot of variety to choose from. There isn’t simply a ‘good safe’ or a ‘bad safe’ – there are safes made for different purposes completely. What is the perfect safe for someone else may be the wrong safe for you.

If you are looking for safes, you have come to the perfect place. We’ll list down the different factors you need to account for when looking for a safe. If you follow this guide, you will end up buying the perfect safe for your needs at the perfect price. Let’s look at how you should go about buying a safe.

What type of protection do you need?

This is the first question that you need to ask when you are looking for a safe. Different safes are meant to offer different types of protection. If you just want a safe that can keep things private you can get a normal safe. By ‘normal’ we mean a safe that simply keeps your items locked away and prevents people from accessing them without having the code or key to the safe.

This is just where protection begins. If you want to keep documents safe, you need a safe that is fireproof as well. Normal safes aren’t airtight and if there is a fire breakout in the room where the safe is placed, all the documents inside the safe will be destroyed as well. Similarly, some safes offer water protection while others do not. If you are keeping any metal objects safe, you don’t have to worry about water, but if you are keeping documents in the safe, then you need a safe that doesn’t let water in. This is obviously, only required for people who live in areas that may experience flooding or extreme rains.

Once you have decided what type of protection you need, you will be well on your way to narrowing down the types of safe that you need.

What type of lock do you need?

There are generally three types of lock arrangements you can get. You can get a safe with a mechanical lock, you can get a safe with an electronic lock, or you can get one that has both on it. Mechanical locks can be both more and less safe than electric locks – there are a lot of nuances and varieties in mechanical locks! However, you will need to maintain the mechanical lock. They can get too hard to open if they aren’t maintained properly. Electronic locks need no such maintenance.

If you are simply keeping some documents away, you will be good with either of these types of locks. If you are keeping something much more valuable and if you genuinely think that someone may try to access what you keep in the safe, you should get a safe with redundant locks. Having both electronic and mechanical locks increases the security exponentially.

How big of a safe do you need?

Now you need to think about the size of the safe. If you just need to keep a few documents safe, you can get a small safe. Think of what you are trying to protect and how much space it will take. Now double that size and get a safe that size. Never get a size that just fits what you can think of putting in now. We can guarantee that you will find more stuff that should be in the safe later and then you will regret buying a small safe.

When looking at how big of a safe you need, you also need to look at where you will be keeping the safe and whether there is enough space in your home for the safe size you are buying. Don’t buy a safe that is so big that you have to place it in a prominent place instead of where you planned to store it originally.

Will your safe be fixed or portable?

Portable safes are great because they allow you to transport the safe with all its contents easily. That is also their main disadvantage. Someone might just take the whole safe away if it is too portable, deciding to try opening it once they are in a safe place. Portable safes should only be bought if you plan to move the secured items. Safes being too heavy and inconvenient to move around is a good thing.

What is your budget?

Now, you need to decide what the right budget will be for a safe. The budget depends firstly on how much money you have, however, that isn’t the only deciding factor. No need to overspend on a safe just because you had extra money lying around. You need to look at what you will be keeping safe. If it is just a few documents, then you can buy an inexpensive case. If what you are keeping in the safe is too valuable, then don’t feel bad about overspending at all. The value of whatever you keep in the safe and how much is keeping it safe worth to you? Ask this question before you decide what the budget of your safe will be.

Based on the above guide, you should be easily able to decide which safes fall in your parameters. These five questions will help you pick the perfect safe for you. For some people, it will be small and portable safes with mechanical locks. For others, it might by huge safes with both mechanical and electric locks.

Make sure that once you get the safe, you take further steps to keep things inside it safe. You need to make sure that the passcode you use is not something people will be easily able to guess. Once you’ve picked the right combination, your items will be truly safe.