What actually holds your door shut

Two quotes for the same job can look identical on the page and leave you with very different doors. The difference is almost never the smart lock. It is what happens to the cylinder.

On a uPVC or composite door, the way in is the euro cylinder — snapped in two and the mechanism worked from there. That attack does not care what is mounted on the inside of the door. It is the same piece of metal it always was.

So the question that decides how your door holds up is what the cylinder is rated to. Two marks matter here: TS007 3-star, a BSI Kitemark, and Sold Secure Diamond. Both are independently tested against snapping, drilling, picking and bumping, and both are recognised by Secured by Design. A cylinder carrying either is about as good as a domestic door gets.

A retrofit smart lock fits to the inside of the door and turns the cylinder you already have. Nothing on the outside changes. If your cylinder is already rated, it stays rated and it stays certified — you keep every bit of the security you paid for and add the rest on top. If it is not, we fit one that is while we are there, and you end up better protected than before the smart lock was ever mentioned.

That is the whole trick, and it is why we lead with retrofits. The upgrade that resists force is the cylinder. The smart lock is what goes behind it.

With the physical side unchanged or improved, everything the electronics add is a straight gain.

The door locks itself a few seconds after it closes, every time. On a multipoint door that matters more than people expect: pull it to without lifting the handle and turning the key and it is latched, not locked. Auto-locking takes that off the table for good.

Access stops being a physical object you cannot get back. A code goes to one person, can be limited to particular days or hours, and is withdrawn in seconds without touching the door or reissuing anybody else. For a landlord between tenancies, the changeover stops being a locksmith visit.

And most of the locks we fit will sound an alarm at the door and send an alert to a phone if somebody starts interfering with them. No mechanical lock has ever done anything remotely like that.

Ask what happens to the cylinder, and what the one you end up with is rated to. A quote that keeps or fits a 3-star cylinder and a quote that swaps a rated cylinder for an unrated all-in-one unit are not the same job, and only one of them leaves the door stronger than it was.

We put the make, model and rating of everything we fit in writing on handover, so you are never taking our word for it afterwards.