Enhancing the Security of Your Wall Safe – Mounting and Structural Reinforcement

By Rob Blum

Over the years, we have sold thousands of BlumSafe built-in wall safes, and along the way, have been asked every question imaginable about security and  wall safes.

In summary, for security of their contents, wall safes are often superior to exposed, free-standing safes, depending upon three essential factors: Concealment, Material Strength, and Structural Integration.

1. Concealment.

The most secure safe is the one you don’t know is there – a real benefit of a built-in wall safe like the BlumSafe, which most clients place in their bedrooms or dressing rooms for optimal accessibility. In addition, if possible, concealment behind artwork or custom panels—such as our Electronic Screen, Magic Mirror, or Sliding  Mirror—adds an added critical layer of concealment protection, making the  home wall safe  far less likely to be discovered during a typical break-in.

2. Material Strength.

Material strength matters. If the safe IS discovered, the safe’s surface must withstand forced entry, whether crafted from steel or 1/2”  impact-resistant polycarbonate (the stuff bullet proof windows is made of, as well as our Display Door built-in BlumSafe). The fireproof, Class B Burglary BlumSafe Professional, with a ½” thick solid steel door, leads the market in this category, offering unmatched resistance to physical attacks among wall-mounted safes available today.

3. Structural Integration and Secure Wall Mounting.

Even the strongest  safe is only as secure as its installation. A luxury wall safe must be firmly anchored into your home’s structure, ensuring the safe cannot be easily removed or compromised. In addition, your home’s structure can be reinforced to make removal of a built-in safe even more difficult.

In this blog piece we discuss ways to enhance that last consideration – the attachment of your safe to your home.

The Basics

Burglaries. With enough time and the right tools, even the heaviest, most secure safe of any type can be removed or cracked by a criminal (which is what insurance is for). You may have seen surveillance camera videos on the internet in the past year of professional burglary gangs hauling out large gunsafes from homes.  A friend of mine in London returned from a business trip once to discover his “high security” safe—over 1,000 pounds and once secured to his concrete basement floor— missing.

Accordingly, the objective in mounting any safe should be to force the criminal to use an uncomfortably long amount of time to defeat your security arrangement, so they flee before they are successful. Fortunately, in most US burglaries the perpetrator is in and out in under 12 minutes and doesn’t have much time to look for your concealed wall safe. In addition, the lion’s share of burglars enter a home with little more than a screw driver and/or a hammer;  if they manage to locate your stealthily concealed wall safe, these are generally inadequate tools for the task at hand.

Typical Construction and Attachment of a Wall Safe to your Home. With a built-in safe like the BlumSafe and BlumSafe Professional series, the standard mounting technique is usually sufficient to protect your safe from removal. Like many wall safes, our built-in safes are designed to be mounted in walls between 16” on-center studs, or in cabinetry or closets between similar supporting members, usually around 32 inches or so above floor level. Our safes have holes in their vertical sides, so that the safe can be lag-screwed  (i.e., heavy duty screws) to these studs or similar solid vertical members in cabinetry. One could also supplement these attachment points by attaching the back wall of the safe to a surface behind it, either into studs or concrete. And our BlumSafe Professional requires  mounting to at least two of three dimensions – side mounting to studs, back wall and/or attachment to the floor via legs.  This all makes removal more difficult.

Resisting a More Professional, Determined Criminal

Vertical wall studs are typically made of wood, so they can be cut through with various power tools if your criminal comes to your home  really prepared, often the  result of “an inside job”.  This means that if a professional criminal comes to your home  with the right power tools, detects your concealed safe, and feels he has adequate time, he could theoretically cut out your studs and remove your wall safe.

As we mention above, those conditions represent only a tiny fraction of burglaries, but to make things tougher and more time consuming for your criminal, you should consider several additional reinforcement techniques. These might present a challenge if you are retrofitting your safe to an existing space, but are pretty simple if you are building a home or addition, going through a renovation or installing new cabinetry. Here are some ideas:

1. Rear Wall Attachment.

• In addition to attaching your wall safe to side vertical supporting members like studs, as described above  it would improve security to also attach the safe to a reinforced back wall, into studs or concrete, if available. Our high security BlumSafe Professional already has holes drilled in its back wall for this purpose; for the regular BlumSafe and the Professional Junior, our mid-level security safe, you can easily drill these holes yourself.

2. Reinforced Steel Legs Attached to the Floor Plate.

• Steel is tougher to cut through than wood, and we offer an ingeniously designed steel leg system that attaches the bottom of a BlumSafe Professional to the floor plate of your bedroom or dressing room. Holes are drilled in the bottom of the BlumSafe Professional for  mounting these legs, and you could drill holes in the bottom of the regular BlumSafe or Professional Junior for them as well. These legs have a hardened steel rod in the middle of them that spin when engaged by a saw, further decreasing their vulnerability.

3. Reinforcing Studs.

• Sistering Wood Studs. A simple and effective method of reinforcing your installation, to make removal more difficult, is to reinforce your wall studs. The easiest way to do this is to “sister” your studs – essentially doubling your studs to add more wood material for your burglar to cut through,  which also strengthens the installation for a heavier BlumSafe Professional (especially a 400 pound fireproof version).
• Adding Steel Plates. But to more greatly enhance security, you should consider adding a “flitch plate”, a steel plate sandwiched between sistered wood studs. Steel is simply harder and slower to cut through than wood, even for a burglar equipped with the right tools. Flitch plates are typically more commonly used to reinforce load-carrying beams in ceilings than in studs. However, when used in studs, they further enhance the strength of the studs, and more importantly, make removal of a safe bolted to the studs much, much more difficult for the burglar. A steel plate bolted between your studs, ¼” thick by 6” deep by 8’ tall to mount to your floor and ceiling joists is only approximately 41 pounds (but 1/2” thick is even better). Your contractor would have to obtain the steel and make sure holes were cut in it for the sistered studs to be attached to each other to create this “stud sandwich”, and holes for the  bolts to attach to the safe. But securing your safe to this type of stud installation  would almost assuredly ruin the day of your burglar, especially if you are attaching a BlumSafe Professional to it.

Conclusion

By combining concealability and material strength,  BlumSafe  wall safes deliver a premium solution for protecting your most valuable possessions—without sacrificing design or accessibility. And making the  physical installation of your safe more secure will optimize protection of your jewelry, watches and other keepsakes. But never forget to have adequate insurance on your safe’s contents.