With any big city, there is always the issue of crime, and Los Angeles is no exception. Most home break-ins happen using the front door, so it is incredibly important for you to know how to reinforce a door. With a strong front door, you can send away any criminal who is thinking of targeting your property. Try any or all of the following ways to secure your doors.

1. More Locks

Every lock you have adds another connection between the door and the door jam. This provides another point that needs to be overcome in order to open the door. If you are looking for how to secure a door from being kicked in, additional high quality locks are a great place to start, because even if the blunt force comprises one of the door locks, more remain. Lock picking will also take longer as a result of having more locks to pick.

2. Utilize Doors With Solid Construction

With a house that is incredibly well-protected, your door can be what ends up breaking, so you may actually need to reinforce a door by replacing it with a stronger door. Solid core doors are the starting point for all entryways that need to be secured against bludgeoning attacks.

You cannot secure a door from being kicked in if the door itself is likely to come apart in sections. For the strongest doors, you should look into doors with metal cores, such as iron and steel.

3. Protect The Lock Hardware

Every part of the door that you remove needs to be reinforced, which includes all the holes made for your lock hardware (deadbolts, door knobs, etc.). The best method of how to reinforce a door at the cross-bore points is to get metal slipcovers.

You will need to remove the locks from your door, secure the slipcover, and then reinstall the locks. After this point, you will have reinforced your door at one of its most vulnerable points.

4. High-Security Locks

Besides using more locks, you can use high-security locks, which protect against lock picking, drilling, cutting, and secure a door from being kicked in due to their use of strong metal alloys. With certain high-security locks, you can also make sure that your door cannot be opened using bump keys. If you are looking for how to secure a door, at least one high-security lock will go a long way to thwarting every type of break-in method.

5. Reinforce Window Glass

Every window near, let along on, your door compromises the security of your home. How to secure a door from being kicked in doesn’t matter if they can break a window and unlock the door by grabbing hold of the thumbturn.

The best solution is to use window security film, which makes glass shatter resistant. The adhesive tape presses on to your windows and can be cut to any size. This is a better solution than window bars if you are worried about the appearance barred windows will give your home.

6. Interior Barricades

A movable barricade is the best way to secure a door from the inside. These interior barriers cannot be removed unless there is someone in the home, which limits a resident’s ability to use them. You can protect your property as long as someone is home, and because many people in Los Angeles have roommates, it is possible to use interior barricades more often.

As far as how to secure a door from being kicked in, using barriers that hook to the floor and secure the door at the bottom of the jam, are ideal. Anything that secures at the bottom of the door will provide the most strength, but as long as the barrier holds, it will strengthen your front door.

7. Make Visitors Visible

When most people think of how to reinforce a door, they don’t think of the fact that one of the vulnerabilities is caused by obscuring the person at your door. To do this, you need good lighting and landscaping that has not become so overgrown as to obscure your front door from the view of the street.

How much you secure your front door will be made ultimately null and void if a criminal can take their time under the cover of darkness or foliage. Also be sure that gates and entrances to back doors are made just as visible. Neighbors and passersby should be able to view the perimeter of your home. 

9. Replace Existing ¼ Inch Screws

Take out the set screws for your strike plate and door hinges and replace them with 3-inch screws. This allows the two parts of doors that are most likely to fail when the door is struck. It is not going to sound like it should be included as one of the methods of how to reinforce a door, but it might actually be the best way to secure a front door. 

This is a fast and cheap method for how to secure a door from being kicked in, and will often make it more likely that the door will break than the strike or hinges to fail (which are the points that fail on doors during almost all kicking attacks). It is cheap, fast, and truly reinforces your door to a serious degree.

10. Contacting A Locksmith

Not everyone can secure their door all by themselves. For those of you who need additional tips or help, Locksmith Pros USA is the best locksmith in Los Angeles to call. The advantages of contacting a locksmith when you are looking for the best way to secure a door from the inside, or how to reinforce a door, is that the locksmith knows all of the options. A professional can find the best solution for your needs and budget.

Closing Advice

There are endless ways to strengthen your front door and the security of your doors in general. For more information on other methods or elaboration on what was described in the sections above, reach out to a quality Los Angeles locksmith like Locksmith Pros USA.