Buying a Safe - Safe Selection Buying Guide

This is a core question. If the valuables you’re protecting are irreplaceable or of significant sentimental or monetary value, do you really want to be entrusting them to a safe rated to provide 5 minutes of protection?
Wall safes along with the majority of top selling safes today can be pried off or opened in just over 5 minutes by a semi-skilled criminal armed with a hammer and crow bar.
Do not take chances with important valuables by storing them in these containers.

For more info on the industry recognized safe ratings, click here. 

Estate and Luxury Jewelry Safes include elegant configurable jewelry box drawers to easily access and organize jewelry. It's also common for a luxury safe to include a watch chest housing watch winders for automatic watches are also available with these safe types.

If so, a well fire shielded safe will keep these important documents and priceless photos from reaching flash point in the event of a devastating home fire. Without fire protection, the steel walls of a safe heat rapidly during a fire, cooking the contents within minutes.
All Brown Safe types but wall, and floor safes can be upgraded to include fire protection. 

To learn more about buying a safe with proper fire protection, click here.

This question is a very important one as a safe that takes too long to open or is located too far away rarely get used. If you intend on buying a safe to store items you use daily or even weekly, wall and freestanding safes are a better fit for you as they can be placed right where you're sure to actually use them. A freestanding electronic safe offers far faster entry than the traditional dial safe variety.
The features of the Estate or Jewelry Safe sets these safe types far ahead of the pack, as they are the easiest and quickest safes to use on a daily basis.

Another key question. Often times a client will purchase a small safe only to later learn they use it far more than anticipated and need to upgrade to a larger size to accommodate more items. Yet we also hear other clients tell of purchasing an Estate model with big plans for all the items they intend to store in it, but soon find their planned items diminishing because the safe is kept in a location that’s too far to be routinely accessible.
Space and money permitting, an ideal setup many clients settle into is a large double door Estate Fire Safe or Fire Safe in a somewhat out of the way location downstairs or in the garage where lesser used items are securely kept. An additional small to mid-sized Luxury Jewelry Safe is then kept in the bedroom area for convenient daily access to their commonly used items like jewelry, purses, wallets, watches and other personal belongings.

While most of the time safes are purchased to thwart off determined home burglars, sometimes you simply need a safe to keep out inquisitive kids, prying guests, or probing staff members. If the contents are not overly precious to you, protection is less of an issue than convenience.
Wall Safes are a great fit for this application as these small safes can often be installed within easily accessed walls anywhere they prove useful.
In most cases though, freestanding safes are a better choice as they offer outstanding burglary and fire protection, far more storage space, and are easier to install.

Kind of like asking someone if they’d like a ding resistant car. The obvious answer will always be yes, this type of extra protection is always good.
In the safe world, fire protection comes with a few more complications that one must be willing to accept for this added level of protection.
For Brown Safes, the costs of fire protection are easy to summarize…additional cost, added weight, increased size. If you choose to accept these increases, then fire protection brings superior benefits, including greatly increased burglary protection and of course protection from a devastating home fire. We can add fire protection to all our safe types with the exclusion of wall and floor safes.
Fire protection from other safe companies, however, generally results in seriously compromising trade-offs. While at Brown Safe, we add fire protection by essentially taking an existing burglary rated safe and cladding it within a 2 inch dense shell of highly fire resistant amalgamate. The vast majority of other safe companies instead, opting to save on weight and material costs, often just layer drywall panels between one or two layers of sheet metal. The resulting safe is about 1/3 the weight with material savings to match. Unfortunately for the buyer, these fire safes provide virtually no protection against burglary attacks and is also an inferior fire safe design. In our opinion this method of fire protection is completely unacceptable. Be warned.

Click here for additional information on inferior and superior fire protection methods.

If yes, than fire protection is less of a concern for you. This keeps the non-fire shielded Wall and Burglary Safes in the running. These safes are lighter than fire safes so can be better suited for certain upstairs locations where safe weight may present an issue. If you are buying a safe intended for an upstairs installation heavier than 1200 lbs (quality safes 60 inches or taller commonly achieve this mass), it's always good to have a trusted installer perform a site survey prior to purchase.

While you should never depend solely on an alarm to ward off all evil doers intent on seizing your treasures, alarm systems can allow you to breathe a bit more easily as they statistically aid response time from the police department. All safes can be compromised given enough time, tools, and expertise…but alarms, both silent and audible, tend to reduce the time a criminal has to locate a safe and then attempt entry. Since wall safes are especially vulnerable to quick snatch attacks, these types are not the best choice if it’s likely the criminal has the opportunity to snoop around for a while.

Estate and Luxury Jewelry safes are idea for homes with alarms and/or home automation systems as these safe types have a variety of features that allow the safe to directly interface with alarm and home automation systems, enhancing the homes overall security level.

Safes create a time barrier between criminals and your belongings. If you live in an area with fast response times, lighter protection safes are still a potential option.
If you’re in a more isolated location or in an area that may take more time for authorities to arrive, you will want to go with the higher protection safe types like Vaults, Floor, Estate, and High rated Burglary and Luxury Jewelry safes.

In most cases, it’s a good idea to place your safe in a location you’re likely to use on a daily basis. Closets and bedrooms tend to work well. However, these locations are often upstairs. Most homes don’t have a strong enough floor foundation to handle the weight of a fire clad Estate Safe and may require additional support.
However, the majority of homes can support the weight of small to mid size fire cladded safes.

If considering a large Estate size Safe, Brown Safe can have a qualified safe installer come inspect the location first to determine structural feasibility along with ironing out any difficulties associated with installation. We have a network of qualified installers all over the world and are glad to introduce you to a trustworthy one in your area.

Insurance companies will not reduce their rates for an insured item stored within a safe unless that safe meets certain minimum standards of protection.
The minimum safe requirement for the vast majority of insurance companies is a ½ inch thick solid steel door with ¼ inch thick solid steel body.
All Brown safes meet this minimum protection requirement. We also offer further protection levels ratings that can result in additional insurance savings.

Owning a high security safe will rapidly pay for itself if the valued contents carry insurance.

As for the competition, even the highest rated safes from virtually all top selling safe builders fail to meet these minimum insurance company requirements. If you have insured items or are considering insurance, it pays in more ways than one to research and understand the protection level rating for all your safe contenders prior to purchase.