When it comes to safeguarding your jewelry, you are going to want more than just a lock and key.
You need a safe that’s specifically designed to protect your belongings from theft, as well as fire and water damage.
Anyone who spends thousands and thousands of dollars on fine jewelry and watches will eventually begin to ask themselves about the real chances of facing a loss of these small items.
It would be very easy for items to be “lifted” from your home when you have a party due to distraction and people milling about freely the entire evening.
We don’t want to think of our friends and family as being vindictive thieves, but why push the envelope to find out if there are any in your inner circle?
But hosting a party for people who may have sticky fingers is not the only way that we can lose our fine jewelry.
A house fire, flood or tornado are two other events to consider when you are choosing to protect valuables.
Additionally, thinking that simply buying an insurance policy while not following some basic guidelines to protect your valuables will leave you disappointed.
An insurance company may elect to not pay out for your loss if you had not bothered to store your items in something that “reasonably” secures them from theft.
In this blog post, we will discuss the best safe features for jewelry and why they are important for protecting your collection.
Stay safe and keep your jewelry protected with one of these top-rated safes!
Table of Contents
What to Look for in a Safe
Before you purchase the first safe that you see on Amazon, it is important to understand what makes a good jewelry safe.
You will find a plethora of features that may or may not be “necessary” in our opinion.
If you are rolling in money and want your safe to look as nice as the jewelry that you put inside it, then there is no reason not to indulge yourself in features like designer padding on the inside and specific compartments for the different types of jewelry or watches that you own.
There are many safes out there that will accommodate the most finicky to the most minimalistic minded.
But other than style, lets see what we should be looking for in a safe that will actually give your jewelry the most protection:
Theft Protection
No safe is 100% theft proof.
What we are looking for is one that will make a thief work extra hard and plan extra long to get your valuables.
The type of locking mechanism and the thickness of the steel exterior are the top considerations for which safe that you ultimately decide to buy, along with the mounting style and location.
We prefer a combination dial.
This way, there is no physical key that can be duplicated or lost, and the combination can not be guessed if someone was to overhear you entering it.
Fire Protection
After theft, fire is the next most common way that valuables are lost.
The fire rating on a safe should have at least one hour of burn rate at a minimum of 1500 degrees because house fires take time to be put out.
If you are storing your most prized jewelry inside a safe, chances are that you will also be storing your most important documents in there also.
Fire protection is not often considered a high priority for many people, but it should be.
Type of Locking Device
When choosing a safe, the type of lock can make the difference in whether or not even YOU can get inside to retrieve your own valuables.
Probably the easiest way that you will be locked out of your safe is if it has a key that can be lost or misplaced.
The runner up to losing a key would be a battery that has not been regularly changed, and has stopped functioning for a push button digital entry.
Battery backups are usually featured with digital entries, but they also depend on you changing them before they become too weak to function.
Last is the simple and time tested manual dial combination entry.
This is the most secure way to be certain that you will be able to enter the safe without worrying about keys or batteries.
Thickness of Steel Exterior
If you have a safe that is thin walled and not difficult to pry open with a crowbar, then you do not really have a safe. A crowbar attack can be thwarted best if the steel is at least made from 10 gauge and is anti crowbar designed.
However, if a thief is given enough time, they will eventually be able to get through any safe.
This is why it is best to keep your safe in a location that is not easily seen, and if possible, bolted down so it can not just be picked up and taken away – and thicker steel exteriors make thieves jobs that much more difficult.
Jewelry Organizer
After the safety features are settled, we should mention that there are other features that can be of interest too.
It is hard to find all the safety features that you would want and also find it complete with jewelry organization.
You will have to pay a premium, but if you have tens of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry and want a quick way to grab what you want to wear daily, then an organizer might be a must have.
While you can store the small boxes that come with each piece of jewelry in a more simple design, it will take you longer if you have to open each one to get a visual on what you want to wear.
You could potentially spend a half an hour assembling your jewelry for the day.
So an organizer might be right for you.
Padded Interior
If you are feeling as though the inside of your safe should be just as spectacular looking as the jewelry housed inside of it, then you may find that you want a safe that has a designer appearance and has walls and other areas that are padded.
Keep in mind that you will have to put the silica dehumidifiers inside it because the padding will eventually pick up odors or musty smells.
If you store cash in your safe, it will come with impregnated moisture and odors, not to mention bacteria.
A silica gel pack will eliminate at least the moisture and odors.
Size of Safe
The size of your safe is going to depend on the use of it and the location where you want to install it at.
You can choose very small portable safes, which we would not recommend for obvious reasons, that anyone can carry it away, to large gun safe sizes.
Most people, when they think of buying a safe for their jewelry, already have in mind what they want to store inside of it.
Here are some examples:
- Cash
- Gold and Silver coins
- Jewelry
- Small handgun
- Memorabilia
- Important Documents
- Other collectable valuables
Given that these are typically the items that people would want to put into their safes, because these are items of great value and items that are sentimental, you can begin with collecting all these items and deciding how big your safe needs to be to accommodate these items and still leave a bit of extra room for more.
Other Considerations
There are the more expensive safes that have a feature which have a vibration alarm that is activated while someone is actively trying to pry or remove the safe from its location.
Another feature is a keypad that freezes after three failed attempts to open it, which we have tripped many times for our own safes.
Finally, a feature that also comes into play is water protection.
If you live in a flood prone zone of the country, you may want to look into buying a safe that will keep your most important documents dry in the event that you did not have the time to remove them.
The only drawback for this is reality.
The reality is that if there is a flood, it can take more than 72 hours for the water to recede and the ratings do not go beyond that time.
The Different Types of Safes
The last thing we want to touch on are the different types of safes that you can buy.
While we would love to go into detail about each one, we will focus on the most common that will best suit the needs of those looking for a safe to protect their jewelry.
Fire Safes
This type of safe is especially important if you live in wildfire prone areas of the country.
Sometimes you only have 10 minutes to evacuate and the first thing that people grab are their pets and other things like family photos.
People do not actually allow themselves to think that theirs is the house that firefighters will not be able to save, and will leave their valuables inside their safe during their rush to leave.
Fire safes should have a 1 hour burn rating because the temperature will actually fluctuate during a fire.
It is also worth mentioning that thieves will loot empty homes during evacuations, so it is best to have a safe that is bolted to the ground or too heavy for someone to lift and take with them.
Burglary Safes
It stands to reason that whether you live in a densely populated large city or out in the rural areas of a county, thieves will go to your house if they get wind that there are valuables located on the premises.
The old saying “loose lips sink ships” are usually the only way they’d know you have valuables, other than seeing for themselves what you are wearing in terms of jewelry or watches.
Theft is the number one way that we are relieved of our jewelry unless we simply are so absent minded that we leave it behind in a hotel or lose it while on an excursion.
Burglary safes are usually made with a steel body and a steel plate that covers the door to make it harder for someone to pry it open with a crowbar or other tools.
Gun Safes
These are typically very large safes the size of a refrigerator.
If you have a lot of valuable possessions, such as being a collector of guns, ammo and silver coins or bars, then this safe will also be great for your jewelry.
These safes are bolted into the concrete to prevent thieves from hauling them away, and their weight alone would make for quite a problem taking it even if not bolted down, unlike smaller jewelry safes.
The only downside to this type of safe is that you may live in an apartment or condo that you would have an issue with concealing it or getting permission to bolt it to the floor.
Jewelry Safes
These safes are limited in size, but that may be one of the main attractions for buying one.
They can be secured into walls in very creative hiding places or on the floor.
Keep in mind that unless they are going to be bolted down into cement, then a thief will likely just pry it out of its position with a crowbar and haul it away for opening later if they discover the location of it.
The Best Safes for Jewelry (Our Recommendations)
Now that we have gone over the different types of safes, it is time to give our recommendations for the best safes for jewelry.
Best Safe For Jewelry Under $300: SentrySafe Fireproof/Waterproof Safe (SFW123CU)
If you don’t mind that this safe does not have all the plush upholstery features or specific compartments for displaying jewelry, then this is the pick we would suggest for most people.
At the present cost of under $300, it is not only affordable, but has the main and most important features that you would want in a jewelry safe.
- Manual Digital Combination. It does have 3 other entry options to choose from, but choosing this particular option means that it would be impossible to be denied entry due to mechanical or battery failure or loss of keys. This is a huge plus.
- Crowbar resistant. It has a hinge bar that prevents crowbar attacks from success.
- 4 locking bolts. While there are safes with 5 bolts in this size category, 4 bolts will be enough to stop the most stalwart individual from entry and this safe has all the other basic important features.
- Fire Rating. This safe has the longest burn time of 1 hr rating at the highest temperature of 1700 degrees. It is also waterproof for up to 24hrs.
- Drop. This safe can be dropped from 15 ft and still remain closed. It also weighs 86lbs, so it can be mounted in more places.
- Room. The interior size is just about what you would want to store jewelry and documents in. It has a 1.2 cubic foot capacity which is plenty of room for plenty of jewelry.
Runner Up: Barska White Jewelry Safe (AX13104)
This safe is best if you don’t mind spending a bit more money and want some of the features that add an elegant touch to storing your jewelry.
Features:
- Anti Pry door hinges to prevent crowbar attacks.
- 3 deadbolts to secure the door.
- A decent 11 gauge steel exterior.
- Fire rated for 30 minutes at 1400 degrees.
- Lighted when opened.
- Electronic Digital keypad, but with batteries.
- Visually appealing and with specific Jewelry compartments.
The only reason that we put this in the #2 runner up position is because there are some people who would actually not mind spending $1350+ for this model even though the quality is not as good as our #1 choice.
Despite it’s popularity, we feel as if the 30 minute fire rating is not sufficient, nor do we like the fact that it has a electronic entry that relies on batteries.
Other than that, if you have the bucks and want a jewelry organizer as well as a safe, then this might be the choice for you.
Final Thoughts
There are many different jewelry safes that you can buy, but we do not believe that any of them can compare to the one we have chosen due to all the features.
While SentrySafe eliminates the fluff, it is the most secure for the various situations that you would need it for.
Other than small jewelry safes, our next pick would have been the larger gun safes which would give you room inside for other things besides jewelry.
Always remember to keep a pretty jewelry box full of costume jewelry and gold plated jewelry on your dresser top.
This is going to detract from where the true valuables really are hidden.
A thief does not have the time to loupe each piece of jewelry before deciding what is junk and what is real.
The best thing to do is have a nice looking, but empty box on your dresser with lots of fake jewelry in it, and keep the good stuff hidden away.