Security
The safest room in a house is the one drawn before the walls go up.
Most security arrives late. An alarm is added to a finished house, a safe is bolted into the back of a closet, a camera is screwed to a soffit that was never wired for one. It works, after a fashion, and it always looks like exactly what it is.
Grade builds the house. A reinforced core, a concealed second egress, cabling that reaches the property line, a room that does not announce itself — these can be drawn at the same time as the kitchen, by the same team, inside the same budget, and finished to the same standard as everything around them. Retrofitting any one of them costs more and shows.
Built In
Designed during construction, because afterwards is harder, dearer and visible.
- Safe rooms
- Armored and concealed, with independent air, power and communications.
- Doors and glazing
- Ballistic glass and reinforced frames, detailed to match the architecture rather than interrupt it.
- Perimeter detection
- Sensing at the property line, so a response begins before anyone reaches the house.
- Art protection
- Theft and micro-climate monitoring, wired in during construction and invisible once it is.
- Network and controls
- Segregated cabling and systems laid out with the house, not threaded through it later.
Arranged
Services rather than structure, brought in when a principal’s circumstances call for them.
- Close protection
- Vetted teams, at the residence or travelling.
- Household vetting
- Background work on staff and crew before they are inside the gate.
- Vehicles
- Armored, where a profile warrants it.
- Counter-drone
- Where the airspace over a property is a genuine concern.
Settled when the plan is drawn, which is why none of it reads as security.
Walls, approach and sightlines are decided on paper. A courtyard that encloses, a drive that turns, a window that sees without being seen — these cost nothing extra at the drawing stage and cannot be bought later at any price.
The work that follows is quieter for it. Hardware has somewhere to go, cable runs exist before the walls close, and the finished house looks like a house.
Discuss a Residence →
Grade builds it. A security consultancy specifies it.
Grade brings the house: the drawings, the trades, the programme and the standard of finish. The specification — what a safe room has to withstand, where detection belongs on a particular site, how an opening is rated — comes from a specialist practice working for high-net-worth families, family offices and executives. The work is drawn into the build rather than added to it.