Where is the Best Place to Hide a Safe?

Last Updated on July 11, 2023

Where is the Best Place to Hide a Small Safe?

When it comes to owning a safe, you have three options to protect that safe and its content, in the event of a burglary.

The first is to buy a good, heavy, well-built safe, that is extremely hard to remove from the home due to its weight or being bolted down. In our YouTube video, “5 Things to Look for in a Safe” we discuss what makes a good safe.

But well-built safes are expensive and many people can’t afford them and are protecting smaller amounts of valuables, or just things that are valuable to them that don’t have a large dollar value (like costume jewelry that has been passed down over generations).

A second, less expensive option is to buy a safe that is designed to be concealed, like in-ground floor safes or wall safes. These safes are hidden from view because they are designed to be hidden from view. We talk about those safes in our YouTube video 3-Types of Concealed Safes. But floor safes can be hard to install and wall safes don’t offer much space.

A third choice is to simply hide that safe from anyone who may enter the home. Unlike buying a safe that is designed to be installed in a wall or floor, you can hide small safes without doing any home modifications.
Unfortunately, you see a lot of garbage on the internet when it comes to where to hide a safe. One website even suggests you hide your safe in a box of kitty litter. First, that would have to be the worlds smallest safe and second, ewwww.


As a professional locksmith and security company, here are our recommended Five Best Places to Hide Safes

  1. Under the kitchen or bathroom sink
  2. On a pantry shelf or on the pantry floor
  3. In a laundry room cabinet
  4. Concealed under an old box
  5. In safe containers that are designed as other objects

diversion can safes

Jump to:

Is it easy to find a Hidden Safe?

Hide the safe under a sink

Hide it in a laundry room cabinet

Hide the safe in the pantry

Hide it concealed under an old box

Small specialty diversion safes, designed to conceal objects.

Where NOT to hide a safe.

Prefer Video? Check out our YouTube video on How to Hide Small Safes

Is it easy to find a Hidden Safe?

Given enough time any hidden safes will eventually be found, but FBI statistics show that home robberies average only a total length of 8-10 minutes. This makes sense. A burglar wants to get in and out of your home fast. The longer they are in your home, the greater the risk of getting caught. So when hiding a safe, the important bit isn’t if it can be found, but how long does it take to find it.

Since we are hiding small, not as secure safes, should the burglar find the safe you will want one that has the capability to be secured to the wall or the floor.

The best small safes we sell on our website for hiding are the Point Safes by Burg Wachter brand out of Germany (see Burg Wachter Point Safes on our Website). Though small this is still a very solid and well-built safe. They can be secured from the rear (to a wall) and the base (to the floor) of the safe. The point safes do not have a fire rating. Once of the point safes from Burg Wachter is specifically designed for the shape of a large laptop, and that’s pretty cool.

We also carry more affordable smaller safes by AMSEC on our website. The EST line of safes by American Security Safes (AMSEC) is an example of a small home safe that can (and should) be hidden. They too can be secured from the base and rear of the safes as well for additional protection.


One of the challenges with small home safes is that they are often not fire rated and not very secure. That’s why we hide them. But the Burg Wachter CL line of safes is the only small safe we have that has both a fire rating AND a burglary rating. If your hiding spot has the room for one of these smaller Burg Wachter Burglary safes, they are a fantastic choice.

Hide the Safe Under a Sink

How to Hide a Safe Under a Sink:
Kitchen sink and laundry room sinks are both great place to stash safes. Place a small safe in the back corner under the sink and screw it in to the cabinet bottom or the rear of the cabinet for additional protection. Put a few bottles of cleaner in front of it to obstruct the view.

Why Hiding A Safe Under The Sink Works:
No one, goes looking under a sink for anything of value. You have yourself a hiding spot that very few, if any, will ever go looking for. Stay away from the master bedroom sink, as burglars may look there for jewelry and such simply due to the proximity of the master bedroom closet. The ideal spots are laundry room and kitchen.

What Are The Drawbacks?
This only works for very small safes because you need to get the safe behind the plumbing. Additionally, if the sink ever leaks the bottom of the safe will be exposed to the water and can rust.

What Safes Work Well?
The AMSEC EST line of affordable home safes will work well as well as the Burg Wachter Point Safes. They are small enough (measure twice) and can be secured to the bottom and back of the cabinet.

Hide the safe in the pantry

How to Hide a Safe in a Pantry:
This has been my favorite location for years. Some pantries are more well suited than others.

A walk-in pantry is better because you will have more space to put a larger safe, and the additional space gives you more options for putting stuff in front of the safe. This is especially true in the corners.

My favorite walk-in pantries have doors the open INTO the pantry. In my last home, this was the case. When a door opens into a pantry, you to put a safe behind the door. That is, when you open the door, the act of opening the door will conceal the safe. In order to see the safe, you will have to enter the pantry AND then close the door behind you.

Why hiding a Safe in the Pantry Works:
Like a sink, burglars aren’t running to pantries to find safes. If you have a pantry with a door that opens into, you have found the best spot in your home to hide a safe because even if it is checked, the door will be hiding the safe for you.

What are the Drawbacks?
As with most of these techniques, size is a concern, but you can get a pretty decent sized home safe on the floor of a pantry and bolt it into the floor.

What Safe to Choose?
Ideally, go with one of the Burg Wachter Burglary Rated Safes we carry on our website. You get fire protection and overall strength due to its burglary rating so that they can safely be used for higher-end valuables like jewelry. That’s hard to find in a small safe.

If budget your main concern and the value of the content is not high, the AMSEC EST line and the Burg Wachter Point Safes will do.

Hide Your Safe in the Laundry Room

How to Hide a Safe in a Laundry Room:
Secure the safe in a cabinet by screwing it into the wall of floor of the cabinet. Lower cabinets are more ideal than uppers, as the safe can be larger and they are typically deeper so that you can put more junk in front of the safe to hide it.

Why Hiding A Safe Under The Sink Works:
Have you ever spoken to someone that was robbed and they told you, “Wow, they really tossed the laundry room!”? Of course not! Bottom cabinets in laundry rooms typically have a lot of space so larger home safes can be used. Upper cabinets will require smaller safes.

There is enough stuff in a laundry room: detergent, rags, bottles, etc…, that hiding the safe once it’s in the cabinet will be a breeze. There won’t be one iota of suspicion.

What Are The Drawbacks?
Other the general size of the safe, none. Under a sink in a laundry room is my second favorite location to hide a safe.

What Safes Work Well?
If you have only upper cabinets or a sink, you will need the smallest AMSEC EST or Point Safe you can find. If you have lower cabinets, you can probably go with the more secure Burg Wachter Burglary Rated Safes.

Hide the Safe Under an Old Box

hide a safe under a box
Hide a Safe Under an Old Box

How to Hide a Safe Under a Box:
Cut out the bottom of a box and slide it over the top of a safe that is in a closet, the garage, or under the stairwell. Pile some old toys or old blanks around, and bam! You’ve hidden your safe well. For ease of use, you can also remove the back of the box so the box won’t need to be slid off the top to get to the safe.Why Hiding A Safe Under a Box Works:
Sometimes, the best hiding spot is in plain site. The older the box, the crappier it looks, the more junk you can pile around it, the more it will get ignored. People put things they no longer want or need into boxes, so that makes thieves think it’s undesirable.

What Are the Drawbacks?
Takes a little more showmanship to get the box and its surroundings to look discarded, and all of the faux junk you place around the safe will have to be moved when you want to get into the safe. Plus, it will be a bit of an eyesore, but that’s intentional.

What Safes Work Well?
A box allows you to have a larger more secure safe than placing in cabinets does. Our Hollon Line of Burglary Rated Safes are fantastic and priced great, but can’t be used with the other ways of hiding safes because they are too big for cabinets.

If you have a gun safe, AMSEC makes a product that essentially does the same thing. It makes the gun safe look like a cabinet when in the garage and viewed from the street. You can check out this Safe Cloak on our website.

Small Specialty Safes Designed to Conceal Objects

can safes
Diversion Can Safes

What are Small Specialty Safes:
Small specialty safes are small faux products that are specifically designed to hide the fact that they are safes. They really aren’t safes at all. They are disguised storage containers. Once they are found they can just be opened with no effort, but finding them is the challenge!

These are items designed as books, pop cans, food can, wall outlets, hair brushes, etc….that can conceal only a small amount of items/cash, but they do it very well. We carry a small selection of these “diversion safe” / Can Safes on Our Website.

When to Use Specialty Safes:
These are great when you have roommates or are traveling and just want to hide small amounts of cash/jewelry from people that you might not trust.

What Are the Drawbacks?
Size. Only a few items can be placed in these small containers making them useful in limited cases.

The above spaces and places are our 5 favorite ways to hide safes that weren’t intended or built as hidden safes. Here are the two places in you home you should never hide a small safe.

Where NOT to hide a safe.

Do not hide a safe in a master bedroom or master bedroom closet.
This is the very first place someone breaking into your home will go to find a safe.

Since homeowners get ready for their day in the master bedroom, it’s convenient to keep the jewelry and home security protection in the master bedroom/bath for quick access. But don’t do it! Even if you’ve tried to conceal the safe in a closet cabinet or behind something in the closet, the master bedroom closet will get completely tossed looking for a safe, valuables, cash, or guns.

This is true for every drawer, dresser or nightstand in the master bedroom. They will go through it, they will look behind it. If you have a small safe, do not put it anywhere near the master bedroom or master bedroom bath.

Master Bedrooms Get Destroyed During Break-Ins

Do NOT try to hide a safe under the stairs.

This is also a very common stop for burglars because it is a very common spot for homeowners to place safes.

There are some advantages to putting a safe under the stairs, but one of them is NOT that it will be hard to find.

If you have a well-built safe, putting it under the stairs can make sense if you are able to bolt the safe down or otherwise secure it to a wall or the floor. This is because the space under stairwells is tight. It is difficult to work with prybars and such because there is limited room under there. So if you have a heavy well built safe, that can be secured to the wall of floor, then it may a good option. But the burglar will find it and try to get in. So it is only a good option for a good, secure safe.

Also, if in addition to placing a safe under the stairs, you take a secondary way to conceal it, like the “under the box” method that we mention above, it may suffic–but it’s the box hiding the safe that is giving you the protection. Not the stairwell.

diversion can safes

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