Index
Upgrades
Most of these add exactly one layer to one kind of opening. None of them makes a home safe, and the pages say so; what they do is buy time, produce a record, or change what the place looks like from the path.
2 of them add no layer at all. Measuring a door and keeping a door, frame and wall in one piece are groundwork: nothing a burglar would notice, and the thing every other job on this page is bolted to, measured against, or wasted without.
Of the 12 jobs here, 8 can be done without altering anything permanently, and 4 carry an escape warning above the steps because the hardware restricts an opening from the inside.
Deter
Change what the place looks like to somebody deciding whether to bother.
Place an Outdoor Camera
An outdoor camera does two things in a specific order. Before anything happens it is visible from the path, which is the Deter part and the only part that operates in advance. Afterwards it produces a record, which is the Document part. It does not intervene in between, and a house with four cameras and a hollow back door is a house that will have excellent footage of its own back door.
Drilling required · 1 to 2 hours per camera · needs permission · permanent
Detect
Know that something is happening while it is still happening.
Place a Doorbell Camera
It tells you somebody is at the door while they are still at the door, and it keeps a record of the doorstep. It does not stop anybody and it does not slow anybody down. Most of its value in daily life is the first job — knowing who is there before opening — and most of the marketing is about the second.
Drilling required · 1 hour, longer if wiring is involved · needs permission · permanent
Delay
Make the opening take longer and louder to get through than it looks.
Add a Door Reinforcement Lock
It puts a second restraint high on the door, well away from the deadbolt, so that force applied at the lock line runs into a fixing somewhere else. That spreads the load across more of the frame instead of concentrating it on one strike plate. What it does not do is make a door secure, and it does not work at all when nobody is home, because it only engages from inside.
Drilling required · 45 minutes, plus the time to check whether you are allowed to fit one · needs permission · permanent · escape warning
Fit Window Stops Without Blocking Escape
A stop limits how far a sash can travel, so a window can be open for air without being open enough to climb through. That is a genuine Delay layer on a ground floor. It is also, on the wrong window, a way of making a bedroom harder to get out of, which is why the survey below comes before the hardware.
Basic tools · 20 minutes for the survey, 5 minutes per window · renter safe · reversible · escape warning
Reinforce the Strike Plate
It changes what the bolt is anchored to. A standard strike plate is often held by short screws that reach into the jamb board and no further, and that board is nailed to the framing behind it. Longer screws pass through the board and into the framing, so force at the door meets structural timber rather than trim. It does not make the door strong; it stops one specific cheap failure.
Basic tools · 15 minutes · renter safe · reversible
Fit a Deadbolt Properly
A deadbolt puts a solid piece of metal across the gap between door and frame, which is a real Delay layer when it is fully engaged into framing. Fitted badly — a bolt that only throws halfway, a strike misaligned by a quarter inch — it is a lock that looks locked and behaves like a latch. Most of the value in this job is in the alignment, not the hardware.
Drilling required · 1 hour for a straight swap, longer for a new bore · needs permission · permanent
Secure a Sliding Door Track
A sliding door has two weaknesses that have nothing to do with its latch: the panel can be slid, and on many older installations the panel can be lifted out of its track entirely. A track bar addresses the first. Adjusting or fitting anti-lift hardware addresses the second. Neither addresses the glass, which is a fact worth sitting with before spending anything.
Basic tools · 30 minutes · renter safe · reversible · escape warning
Renter Security Without Drilling
It gets you the layers that do not require a screwdriver: a portable brace at the door, clamp-on stops at the windows, a battery doorbell on an existing bracket, and the free measures that most homeowners skip. It does not get you a reinforced strike plate or a new deadbolt, which are the two changes with the most effect. Those need the landlord, and asking is a better use of an afternoon than working around it.
No tools · An afternoon, most of it spent deciding rather than fitting · renter safe · reversible · escape warning
Document
Keep a record that still exists when somebody asks for it.
Place an Indoor Camera
It records the inside of your home. That is genuinely useful in a narrow set of situations — a hallway that every route through the house passes, a back room with a door onto the garden — and it is a household negotiation in most others. It has no effect on whether anybody gets in.
No tools · 20 minutes · renter safe · reversible
Choose Local or Cloud Storage
It decides whether the footage still exists when somebody asks for it. That is the entire Document layer, and it is settled at the moment of purchase rather than afterwards, because a camera that only does cloud will never do local. It has no bearing on whether anything is prevented.
No tools · 30 minutes of thinking, before you buy anything · renter safe · reversible
Groundwork
Adds no layer of its own. It serves all four, by making sure the thing the other layers are bolted to is measured, sound and still working.
Measure Your Door First
Nothing, on its own. It is here because it removes the single most common reason a lock upgrade fails, which is that the lock does not fit the door and goes back in the box. Ten minutes with a tape measure decides whether the next hour is a fitting job or a return.
Basic tools · 10 minutes per door · renter safe · reversible
Protect the Door and the Wall
Nothing to a burglar. This page is here because every other layer on this site is screwed into a door, a frame or a wall, and those degrade. A handle that has been going through the plaster for five years, a door swinging into a radiator, a frame slowly working loose — that is the substrate every lock depends on. Keeping it intact is maintenance, not security, and it is worth ten minutes anyway.
No tools · 10 minutes per door · renter safe · reversible