Imagine this scenario: You come home after a couple days away, you go to open your front door and notice that it’s slightly ajar, you enter your home to find your TV missing as well as a few other valuables, you’ve been burgled. Being burgled is a traumatic and invasive experience for victims, so with this hypothetical thievery in the back of your mind, how can you deter any would be robbers from breaking into your home?
There is a lot you can do to protect your home from criminals, but a lot of the traditional home security systems cost a lot of money and unfortunately not everyone has a spare £1,000 to fit out their homes with a system with alarms and cameras, so how can you help protect your home without breaking the bank?
1 – Fake It ‘Till You Make It
Full home security systems are expensive, but what if you could make any potential burglars think that you have a security system? Surely if they see something that looks like a security system, that will be enough to scare them off.
Well you’d be right in thinking that and in fact there are multiple companies that exist to just sell decoy and dummy home security gear, such as dummy security cameras, stickers that say a security company looks after your home and even fake bell boxes. All these while not real are usually enough to deter any robber.
2 – Make Them Think You’re At Home
Burglars often target homes when no one is at home, so if they can see that no one is at home, they have an easy target. Most burglars won’t want to break into an occupied house as that increases the danger and risk of their thievery.
So, how can you make your home look like someone is in the house? Well you have 2 options. Firstly, you could just leave a light on in a room visible from the front of your home, or if you have a smart device like an Amazon Alexa linked to your lights, you can set up your device to turn lights on and off on a schedule, as well as turning on the radio at certain times. Either of these tactics should deter a would-be burglar, but the second option is more effective, due to the fact changes will be noticeable rather than a light always being on.
3 – Hide What’s In Your Home
Burglars and thieves often ‘stake out’ their targets before breaking in, they’ll look through ground floor windows to see what there is to steal from a home. So you’re going to want to take away their ability to look into your home.
So, on your ground floor windows you’ll want to remove the ability to look into your home, whilst this can be done by closing your blinds or curtains, you’ll want to make sure there aren’t gaps for burglars to look through, so if you have blinds you’ll want either fitted blackout blinds or closed venetian blinds with privacy tapes to stop anyone from peeking in.
If you don’t have the budget to get new blinds that would block the view from outside, then simply hide any valuables in a place that cant be seen from a window, so any jewelry or electronics should be taken to another room, or simply hid in a cupboard.
4 – Put Up Barriers
We don’t mean literal barriers, but there are things you can do to add another layer of defense to your home that will make the job of any thief a bit harder and each extra layer of defense will help deter any criminals from attempting a break in.
So what barriers can you put up? First off, if you have a path up to your front door, you can simply put up a fence with a door in front, this adds an extra obstacle to push away criminals. Other barriers you can put up a movement detecting light, which will light up if anyone gets too close to your home, which will make them feel seen and hopefully be enough to deter them.
