You have to add a little bit of allowance to advertised capacity. Manufacturers are not providing misleading information, but you need to understand that most of them only state the capacity for how many guns you can fit inside a safe. They can’t account for accessories. A gun can be advertised as big enough for 10 bolt-action rifles, but when you factor in the rifles that have scopes or modifications that could take up space, you’ll end up with a smaller total capacity.

Another important consideration that many gun owners forget is the accessibility of the stored guns. If a gun safe can fit 10 guns and you store exactly 10 guns in it, you will realize that you can’t take out a single gun without removing most of them as well. It’s a situation that is untenable if you think you need to have immediate access to your guns.

Lastly, you also want to have enough space to accommodate new guns. So make sure you put in some allowance when you are deciding on a size of a gun safe.

Some manufacturers tend to advertise dimensions in order to match competitors’ models, so you shouldn’t rely solely on advertised dimensions. This is particularly important if space is tight on the place you plan to put it in. You can check the model in the showroom and measure it first, to see if there are small variations in the size. This consideration applies to both internal and external dimensions. The Safe Company will help you with this. Just ask us and we can provide exact measurements for the safe that you are eyeing.

Longtime gun owners who purchased a gun safe can attest that what they initially thought they need, will eventually turn out to be lacking. This is because most people acquire new guns over time. So if they bought only the exact size they need, they eventually run out of space.

The alternative to buying oversized safes is just dividing your gun collection among several safes. If you fill up your current safe, just buy another one and store your new guns in them.

In this case, you can just choose a size that you are comfortable with, on a price that you can afford. But in the interest of cost-efficiency, you should also remember that the incremental cost of buying new safes over time will sharply go down if you buy bigger gun safes.