Oftentimes, a jewelry safe is an afterthought long after the house is built, or a room is redone. When a jewelry safe is part of the space planning in the early stages of a room design there is virtually no limit on the safe’s size or configuration. But when everything is finished you must work with what you have.
For this project after years of living in her home, the homeowner decided she wanted to have a jewelry safe. She needed a large safe for an extensive jewelry collection and she wanted it to be in her bedroom so it would be convenient to access. It was a large bedroom with a huge walk-in closet, but there was no place for five-foot-tall safe.
Custom Closet Safes (in Plain View)
She had considered re-doing her closet and had the closet company make a few concept designs, but the price was very high, and the closet was only a few years old. There was a large wall mirror that would be an ideal location, but the space behind the mirror was too shallow. She hired a contractor to break out sheetrock and was able to increase the depth of the space to seventeen inches and she could keep the mirror to hide the safe. So now we had the space to work with and had to figure out how to design it.
They created a door for the mirror to hang on, but its hinges barely allowed it to open 90-degrees. In order for the safe door to open 90-degrees, we had to be mindful of the safe’s width so the safe’s handle would not hit the inside of the mirrored door. The safe weighed over six hundred pounds so structural support was required within the walls. With the dimensions now confirmed we were given an inventory list of her jewelry and asked to design the safe’s interior. She had chosen a textured white color for the safe’s exterior and Birdseye Maple with a buff color ultra-suede for the interior. Everything else was up to us.
She required a good amount of shelf space for special Tiffany, Cartier and Harry Winston pieces that she preferred to keep in their original boxes. She also needed shelf space for a few watch winders. But we designed the jewelry drawers to accommodate the jewelry she wore every day.
There were a lot of long necklaces to hang. The limited 90-degree door swing made it impossible to design our vertical necklace drawer. Hanging necklaces on hooks on the back of the safe’s door is a terrible way to store them as they can easily slip off and get destroyed. We have designed a necklace rack that works with the 90-degree door. It is made to pull out past the limited door swing so the entire depth of the safe can be utilized for hanging necklaces.
For her vast necklace collection, we made three necklace racks for various sized necklaces, so they would not overlap each other. It was a difficult installation for a safe this size with less than an inch of wiggle room to push the safe into place. All ended up perfect, and she was very happy to have her jewelry secured.
