Best Hidden Safes: Is It Secret? Is It Safe?

LIKE SUBMARINES, PASSWORDS, OR THE ONE RING — IF THE BAD GUYS CAN'T FIND IT, THEY CAN'T TAKE IT. THE BEST GUN SAFES ARE OFTEN THE BEST HIDDEN SAFES.

When it comes to keeping firearms safe from theft or unauthorized access, it’s easy to daydream about big heavy vault doors and secret concrete closets in the bedroom. If you have the budget to build some kind of Sherlock Holmes-esque hidden room, go for it. 

For the rest of us with regular day jobs, we have to settle for a slightly different solution. While heavy, hard-to-crack safes are great, going the other way and getting a hidden safe that looks like regular furniture or home decor is a great option as well, and often much cheaper.

Hiding your firearms in plain sight inside of a drawer, wall clock, or secret compartment in a nightstand or bedframe is a great way to keep your guns hidden and readily accessible in case you need them in a hurry. 

And the best news is there are a huge number of hidden safes out there that can keep your guns locked up somewhere discretely out of the way, where no one but those you let in on the secret will ever think to look. 

Let’s start with…

BEST HIDDEN SAFES

Tactical Traps Patriot 35S Dual Handgun Safe

First up, we have the Tactical Traps Patriot 35S. This is a totally functional wooden shelf that has a secret interior compartment built into the bottom. The “safe” is locked with a Radio Frequency ID (RFID) keycard that you can keep in your wallet, on your keychain, on your nightstand, or wherever. 

You can also program your own RFID tags so you can open it with an RFID-enabled bracelet, or you can go full Cyberpunk and get a customizable RFID tag implanted in your hand if you really want to make it difficult for anyone else to open it. 

The interior compartment is 17” by 8” making it perfect for a pair of handguns and some spare mags or a flashlight. The interior is foam-lined so you can cut spaces for your handguns or whatever else you want to keep hidden.  

It makes a great handgun safe of course, but like most of the products on this list, you can also use it to hold whatever you’d normally keep in a small safe, like jewelry, ID documents, or what have you.

Tactical Traps End Table

Tactical Traps also has some larger pieces that make for beautiful furniture like this end table with an RFID-locking pistol safe included. 

This is an attractive solid-wood piece that you can get in a variety of finishes to match basically any decor, so it fits well in any room of the house. Tactical Traps has some of the best carpenters around, and their work is definitely on display with these US-made cabinets. 

The table itself is 18.75” tall and 15.75” wide, so it’s got plenty of space to be a very functional end table, and the hidden safe inside it has enough space to easily hold up to a full-size 1911 with a light and an optic. 

The secret compartment uses the safe RFID locking system that the shelf option above uses, and it is guaranteed to open in less than a second, giving you quick access to your handgun if you need it in a hurry. 

Craftsmanship is excellent, and we can honestly say that this is a great end table first and foremost…it just happens to have a very James Bond-esque secret compartment in it. It is available in Cherry, White, Ebony, Dark Walnut, Early American, and Unfinished Wood. 

Hornady Rapid Safe AR Gun Locker

If you’re looking for something a little bit larger that can hide a shotgun or AR, then the Hornady Rapid Safe AR Gun Locker is a great option. This is a great rifle safe that is actually discrete and narrow enough to hide under a bed or in a closet. 

Like the Tactical Traps model above, it also uses an RFID key, and you get two bracelets, two stickers, and a keyfob all keyed to open the safe if they’re placed next to the lock. 

This one is a bit more obvious than the handgun safe above, but it’s also more secure in many ways. It meets or exceeds all ASTM International standards for child and pry resistance, as well as the standards for simple hinge and picking attacks.

It comes pre-drilled to be mounted in either a vertical or horizontal orientation and has both a wall-power AC adapter and a backup battery that keeps the safe operational in the event of a power outage.

If the battery dies, you will have to use one of the two included override keys, but if your power has been out for multiple days, you probably have bigger issues going on. 

It comes in two sizes, one that’s basically a single gun safe, and a triple gun model that’s a little bit wider in order to fit the extra guns in comfortably and safely. We’d recommend the standard model for a quick-access bed safe, and the three-gun model for more general storage.

But hey, if you want a choice of long guns close to hand in case something goes bump in the night, then the XL version will fit under most beds. You only need 9” of clearance. If you’re looking for a bed safe or rifle safe, this is the one we’d recommend looking at first. 

GunVault SV500 Pistol Safe

Next up, we have a fan favorite in the world of discrete pistol safes, the GunVault SV500. This is a compact handgun safe designed to hold a single pistol and to keep it easily within reach. 

The safe can be mounted just about anywhere, whether you want it under a nightstand, hidden under a desk, or even mounted inside your vehicle. It uses a four-button combination lock and runs off a single 9v battery, though it also comes with two override keys.

This is a great option if you’re looking for a small safe that can just hold a pistol and maybe an extra mag, and you don’t need a lot of extra space like you get with some of the rifle safes. 

This is also a good option if you’re looking for something that you can hide in a closet somewhere to keep a handgun reasonably accessible, but far out of the reach of curious children. 

Lastly, if you want this to be a true hidden safe, you can always mount it in a deep drawer on a desk or nightstand if you want, which will keep it that much more secure from thieves and inquisitive little ones. 

Oh, GunVault does include a 5-year fire and burglary warranty as well, which is always nice. We do love a company that will stand behind their products.

Tactical Walls Issue Box Handgun Safe

This next handgun safe is a great option if you don’t want to bother with biometric safes or even keycards, and you just want a secretive place to keep a pistol that nobody is going to check for valuables. 

The Tactical Walls Issue Box is basically just a tissue box holder, but with a false bottom. It functions as a stylish way to keep some tissues close to hand and doesn’t look out of place on an end table, nightstand, or desk.

The box is made of an impact-resistant ABS plastic that has a faux-wood finish that you can get in a few different colors to help match your decor. It doesn’t lock, so you will need to consider your jurisdiction's storage requirements, and think about who will have access to the room it’s in.

This is definitely not the safe to go with if you have small children or live somewhere with secure storage laws, but it is a great choice for hiding a handgun in plain sight and keeping it close to hand in the event that you need to get to it quickly. 

Also, the name is a pun, which gives it a few extra points in our book. I also like their choice of reading material.

Langger V Biometric Safe

Lastly, we have a large in-wall safe that works well as a pistol safe or a rifle safe, depending on which size you go with, and what your needs are. 

The Lannger V Biometric safe is designed to fit into the space between wall studs, so you will need to do some drywall cutting, but installation is still pretty easy. If you can follow some simple instructions and get your hands on a $12 drywall saw, you can have this thing installed in an hour.

It features room for several handguns in the smaller model, and room for an AR-15 or two shotguns in the taller version (or like…eight handguns). It is easily openable with a fingerprint, or you can use the override keys or programmable keypad if you don’t want to deal with biometrics. 

The fingerprint scanner can store up to 100 fingerprints, so you can use this for an emergency office safe as well if you want. We actually know of a facility that uses these for their emergency cabinet in case of an active shooter. 

For the home user, this is a great option for a wall safe, especially the larger rifle safe, and you can easily get a canvas or other wall art to cover the whole thing up if you want your hidden safe to be even more hidden and out of plain view. 

LOOSE ROUNDS

A large central gun safe might work for most of your gun securing needs, but hidden gun safes offer some real advantages that keep them in the running for small collections or to keep a gun handy when you need it.

Ready for more gun safes? Take a look!

• Best Handgun Safes: Fast & Secure Firearm Access
• Best Biometric Safes: Fast Finger Access Action
• 15 Best Gun Safes: Pistols & Long Guns

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