Ways to Hide Safes

Child's Room

• Criminals often do not search a child's bedroom for valuables, according to Jeffrey Strain, writing on the Personal Finance Advice website. A child's room has toys and clothing in it, but rarely any valuables. That is why a child's room is a good place to hide a safe. The criminals are not expecting it, so the child would not be in danger, and your valuables would be well-hidden. Install the safe behind the wall in the child's closet, or under the child's floorboards. Put it someplace unknown to the child where you can get to it when you need to.

Fake Closets

• Criminals search bedrooms and home offices for hidden valuables, and they may not dedicate time to searching linen closets or food pantries. Create a fake back or side wall to one of your hall closets or food pantries, and hide your safe there. If you have a larger safe, then make the entire back section of the linen closet into a removable panel or even a door that can open to help hide your large safe.

Ceiling

• When a criminal enters your home, he is relatively unfamiliar with the layout. He will gravitate toward a bedroom or home office to look for valuables, never thinking to look up. Choose a drop ceiling with removable panels and mount your safe just above a panel, secured to the ceiling frame. Smaller safes are easily hidden this way. Your ceiling frame may not be able to handle the weight of a larger safe.

Kitchen Appliances

• A burglar wants to get in and out of your home as quickly as possible. He does not want to spend time moving large kitchen appliances around to find your home safe, which is why keeping a safe behind a refrigerator or stove can work so well. You can recess the safe into the kitchen wall and then cover the opening with a removable piece of paneling. Use a white panel that looks like a sink backsplash and screw it into the wall with one screw in each corner. Behind the stove, it will just look like a panel to protect the wall from splashing grease. Behind the refrigerator, it may not even be seen.