Since 1990, burglaries in the United States have decreased, largely thanks to increased at-home security measures. Despite those improvements, burglaries are the second most common serious crime in the US.

Preventing break-ins is a multifaceted process, which might include investing in the latest home surveillance technology, installing cameras and door locks, and even moderating your social media habits.

Despite homeowners' best precautions, sometimes a robbery will still occur. The question becomes: how do I mitigate the situation should a worst-case scenario occur?

Burglars today are more technologically advanced than ever. To counteract their ever-advancing toolbelt, home security experts are raising the bar. At-home safe designers are bringing safe technology from the world of professional jewelers to the domestic sphere so every home is equipped with professional-grade safes.

It begs the question: what is the safest area to hide a safe?

We've put together a guide on the best places to hide a safe and add another level of security for the things that matter most.

A high-quality safe is a critical deterrent to burglars looking for valuables, but that is not all a safe offers. A thoughtfully-engineered safe can also protect your family members and inner circle.

If you keep weapons stored in your safe, you'll want to trust that the safe is secure and inaccessible to those in your home who shouldn't have access to those weapons. Two-thirds of children live in homes with unsecured firearms, resulting in over 5,000 accidental deaths in 2020. It's worthwhile to take extra precautions to ensure their safety.

According to the FBI, the average burglary lasts between 8 and 10 minutes. Some burglaries can be as quick as 90 seconds.

Intruders are looking to get in and out as quickly as possible. They may not be willing to crack the code while inside your house, but if the safe is small and light enough, it will be easy to take it out and break it open at another location.

This isn't to say that the heaviest safes are best - lighter safes bolted to walls, drawers, or floors are more secure than heavy safes that merely rest on the ground.

Being intentional about at-home safe placement is also vital. Bedrooms are one of the most popular rooms for homeowners to secure their safes. It's so prevalent that this location is common knowledge amongst criminals. In a survey conducted by NBC New York among convicted burglars, 75% said the master bedroom was the first place they checked for valuable items.

However, sometimes homeowners have no choice but to store their at-home safes in their bedrooms. The bedroom can still be a feasible place for safes as long as they are top-of-the-line options.

If you are looking for optimal at-home safe locations, consider the options below.

We've put together a list of unexpected areas you can keep an at-home safe to minimize its risk of being taken out of the home. We understand that placing this information online may feel counterintuitive - we don't necessarily want to give intruders ideas.

The strategy behind these suggestions is to search for truly surprising spots. The longer the burglar has to search, the more likely they are to give up and flee. This additional time will also allow law enforcement more time to reach your home and catch the perpetrators.

When hiding your safe, you want to achieve the following goals:

• Defy expectations. Burglars rely on their research, their impulses, and human nature. Don't put your safe in an obvious location.
• Put space and obstacles between the safe and the exit. The more time it takes to get to the safe, the better.

The best advantage you have over an intruder is foresight. Assume your home or apartment will be broken into and take steps to make that process more difficult.

One of the best ways to protect your safe is to make it complicated to move. A wall safe is built within the structure of a home rather than sitting on the floor, and it fulfills this requirement.

A wall safe is well-positioned to keep home residents like children away from sensitive materials and objects. Along with advanced locking mechanisms, the sheer height of the safe will keep young ones away from the items like essential documents, jewelry, and firearms like pistols.

The Wall Safe from Mycube includes four pre-drilled bolt holes for secure installation. If a burglar wanted to remove the safe, they would need to come abnormally prepared. To uninstall a Mycube safe, an individual needs to open the safe to unscrew the bolts from the 4 drill holes.

Since that isn't possible, they would need a sledgehammer to break down the wall completely. This process would make a significant amount of noise that might alert neighbors, passersby, and others, which burglars avoid at all costs.

This is an ideal solution if you're using a safe for items you need to access daily, like jewelry or medication. While hiding a safe can keep burglars at bay, it can also make your life more difficult if you need to unhide and rehide the safe every time you want to use it. A wall safe in the closet can help with that.

You can even take this one step further and hide a wall safe behind a painting or photograph. While some burglars are aware of this method, planting a wall safe within a wall with other things hanging on it will help it become a much less obvious place to look.

The average house provides several spaces that lend themselves well to hiding a safe. A home intruder wants to spend as little time as possible exploring their targeted homes. The longer they are there, the more they open themselves up to the risk of being caught or interrupted.

Areas like attics, basements, or crawl spaces are strong contenders for hiding a safe because they are slightly more difficult to get to and are often packed with other objects. Many attics require pull-down ladders to access them. A door to a crawl space may be easily covered or disguised with furniture or design.

When a safe is obscured in storage spaces, an intruder must sift through boxes to discover what is of value and what is not. That is time they do not have during an active break-in.

The kitchen offers almost no value to a burglar. Beyond expensive kitchenware, there's next to nothing in the fridge, pantry, or under the sink that people would normally associate as being intrinsically valuable.

That assumption provides an opportunity.

Residents can easily conceal their at-home safes with cereal boxes, pet food bags, and Tupperware boxes. Putting yourself in the shoes of a thief can make this challenge far more surmountable.

If the above logic is not sufficient for you, there are also classic methods of deterring a burglar that rely more on disguise and trickery.

The false bottom drawer is one of the most effective methods and would work for smaller safes, like drawer safes. Our Biocube In-Drawer opens from the top using dual-spring lift arms, and the false bottom drawer ensures easy everyday jewelry access.

You could also explore adding a hidden space within your staircase or cabinetry. The Biocube protects your valuables with ⅛ inch-thick walls, tamper-proof doors, and biometric fingerprint access technology. The 4 pre-drilled holes ensure that the safe will prove challenging to remove if bolted to the floor or furniture.

The number of obstacles between an intruder and your at-home safe matters. Stack objects on top of it and in front of your safe to conceal it from view and make it more difficult to access.

The heavier, the better; we recommend storing books, shoes, or free weights on and around your closet safe. If your safe is bolted to your closet, you will not need to obscure it quite so much. An aesthetically pleasing Mycube safe can be part of intentional closet organization, enhancing your closet rather than cluttering it.

When considering how to secure your safe against break-ins, intruders, and anyone in the house who shouldn't have access to what's inside, consider the safe's size, shape, and quality and the locking technology.

There's never been a better time for safe technology. The Internet of Things has ushered in a new era, where safes can hook up to the cloud and communicate with their owners.

Our iCube will send alerts to owners if the safe is being tampered with. The locking and unlocking mechanism is managed entirely from a smartphone, ensuring that no one but the owner can get inside. Sophisticated technology can deter intruders from reaching the safe's contents.

In 2019, the FBI reported more than 3.0 billion dollars in burglary-related losses. That doesn't mean it's time to worry - it just means that it's worth it to prepare for the sake of your confidence and peace of mind.

It's time to sit down and consider how you can design your home to best protect the most valuable items within it. In reality, what you're doing is protecting the people within your home from feeling unsafe, which is priceless.

Investing in a safe and choosing the right technology for your specific needs requires thorough research. You can take our quiz here to see which of our highly advanced safes makes the most sense for you and your home.

Sources:

This Is the First Room Burglars Check for Valuables | Reader's Digest

Home Burglary Awareness and Protection | Jacksonville State University

Burglary | FBI

What Is the Internet of Things? | WIRED

Two-Thirds of California Firearm Owners With Children Do Not Store Guns in Recommended Way | UC Davis

Burglary of Single-family Houses | ASU Center for Problem-Oriented Policing