Each era dictates its own styles, including in furniture design. However, in addition to beauty, many interior items should also have additional functionality: have drawers, boxes and shelves. And in some cases - hiding places, small safes disguised as ordinary nightstands, chests of drawers or other pieces of furniture, as well as built into bookcases and wardrobes.
Their presence always had its own meaning: here you could hide something that was not necessary for others to see. And, starting from the 18th century, in any rich house you could find a secretary, and in the Russian version - a desk, where the owner kept especially valuable documents: bills, money, jewelry.
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Furniture with a secret: advantages and features
In past centuries, a desk or cabinet with secret drawers was a mandatory accessory in the home of wealthy individuals. They were used to store especially important documents, money, and valuables, which allowed them to be protected from thieves. Later, a special desk-cabinet was invented in France, which was called a secretaire, because it really could store various secret documents and small valuables.
The popularity of secretaries and other furniture "delights" equipped with various secret spaces was not accidental. Their design has its advantages that ordinary tables and cabinets do not have, and features that are unique to such products.
They are no less relevant today: valuable papers, expensive jewelry, important correspondence and documentation are stored in stylized safes and hiding places. Among the obvious advantages of such furniture, one can note:
- storing valuables without access to them by outsiders;
- their arrangement in different furniture elements;
- the possibility of making secret storage spaces with your own hands.
Among the factors characteristic of furniture with a secret, the design features of such products stand out, allowing to prepare places for storing a specific type of valuables. As a rule, if hiding places are specially equipped, they are supplied with secret locks, and today – with an electronic security system.
Today, the furniture market offers products not only for personal use, but also for businesses and organizations. In addition, it can be made to order according to individual drawings.
Hiding places in ordinary furniture
Antique furniture is a treasure trove of secrets and mysteries. Old master cabinetmakers turned furniture design elements into real works of art. Today's masters make modern furniture in an old style, helping to create a special interior and complement it with secret elements.
Purchasing special tables, cabinets and nightstands with hiding places is quite an expensive pleasure. But this does not mean that especially important documents and valuables will remain on the shelf in the closet.
Ready-made furniture with hidden niches
Today, various types of ordinary furniture equipped with secret spaces are produced. The hiding places can be located in any part of it, and the owners can equip them with their own hands, or by ordering their manufacture from craftsmen, the secret places can be located:
- on the back surface of table tops;
The desk can be equipped with pull-out shelves, the existence of which is not easy to guess - in hollow spaces of table and chair legs, benches;
Chairs-piggy banks or keepers of household secrets - under the bottom of the desk drawers;
You can make a box with a double bottom yourself - in hollow bed backs;
An idea for a convenient hiding place in the headboard of the bed - in the armrests of chairs and sofas.
Original hiding places in the armrests of an old sofa
Hiding places made by hand or on order
There is not always a need to buy expensive exclusive furniture equipped with secret places. You can use a budget option by ordering the necessary element of the furniture interior from specialists according to your own drawings. Or a home craftsman can try to create and arrange it with his own hands.
These can be equipped secret places under or inside tabletops, in the doors of cabinets and bedside tables, as well as shelves and drawers onto which locks can be cut.
Of interest are the small niches with a secret key, located deep in the desk drawers.
Hollow furniture legs and stands
A hiding place arranged in these parts of furniture is considered a classic. It is quite easy to make: you need to drill a hole of the selected size inside the furniture element. It is assumed that only one person will know about such a “secret” - the one who made it.
It is clear that the storage area equipped here for valuables does not assume a large quantity of them, which must not be forgotten to be conveniently disguised.
Advice: You need to make holes very carefully and not overdo it with their diameter, so as not to weaken the structure and cause it to break.
Hiding places in boxes
Traditionally, hiding places are arranged in the drawers of a desk or chest of drawers, where you can make a "second bottom". To equip it, take the same material from which the furniture itself is made, the same size, fix it:
- Velcro;
- magnetic strips in a plastic frame;
- other convenient ways.
You can put flat objects there:
- documents;
- cash;
- photos;
- securities.
Hidden "treasures" must also be secured on the "second day".
Hiding places in cabinets
Wardrobes provide a wide field of activity for equipping secret places from thieves. Their large internal and external space allows you to hide a large number of items of various configurations.
| Location of the cache | What can be hidden? | How to fix |
| Under the bottom of the cabinet, in the far corner | Jewelry, small valuables | · put it in a box of a suitable size and place it on the floor;
·pack in a bag and attach with Velcro to the bottom of the cabinet |
| Behind the back wall | Documents, securities.
Jewelry, art canvases | Secure in bags and tape or glue |
| Behind the inner surface of the mirror | Flat objects only | Use scotch tape |
| At the bottom of the cabinet – forming a second bottom | Any items that match the height of the second bottom | Put it in a niche and cover it with a double bottom |
| In the far corner inside the closet, disguised as a shoe box | Items that fit the box | Place a small box with a lid that locks with a key in a shoe box, fasten it with screws to the floor of the closet, put a pair of shoes on top that no one uses, and cover it with the lid of the shoe box |
Attention! Before hiding an item, you need to decide who can know about the existence of the hiding place and have access to it, so that, if it is discovered by household members, you do not get into a stupid situation.
Fool