Why So Many Encino Homeowners Are Locking Up the Home Office
The home office boom hit Encino hard. Between the older ranch homes south of Ventura, the newer builds in Amestoy Estates, and the condos along Burbank Blvd, we get calls almost daily from residents who want to secure a single interior room. Sometimes it’s for client confidentiality — therapists, attorneys, and accountants working from home near the Encino Commons. Sometimes it’s about keeping kids out of the Zoom room during summer break. Either way, adding a lock to an interior door is a small project that pays off fast.
Our team at Locksmith HQ has been handling for years, and we’ve picked up a few things that aren’t obvious until you’ve drilled into a few hundred doors around town. Here are seven tips we share with clients before we show up.
1. Check What Kind of Door You Actually Have
Most Encino homes built between the 1950s and 1980s have hollow-core interior doors — light, cheap, and not great at holding a lock. If you tap the door and it sounds like a drum, that’s hollow. We can still install a privacy lock or a keyed knob, but for anything with real security value (a deadbolt, a smart lock), the door itself becomes the weak point. Homes in the hills off Louise Ave or up near Mulholland tend to have solid-core or solid-wood doors, which take hardware much better.
Quick test
Hollow doors flex when you push the center. Solid doors don’t. If you’re not sure, send us a photo — we’ll tell you what you’re working with.
2. Decide Between Privacy, Keyed, or Smart
A privacy lock (the kind with a button or thumb-turn) keeps people out during a call. A keyed knob or deadbolt actually secures the room when you’re away. A smart lock — we install a lot of August, Yale, and Schlage Encode units around the Encino Park area — lets you grant access to a cleaner or assistant without handing out keys. Think about who needs in and how often.
3. Match the Lock to the Rest of Your House
If your front door has satin nickel hardware and your office door ends up with polished brass, you’ll notice every time you walk past. We keep finishes consistent with what’s already on your interior doors. Small detail, but it matters — especially in the staged-looking homes we work on near White Oak and Burbank.
4. Think About Fire and Egress Before You Drill
An interior office lock should always be openable from the inside without a key. We’ve had clients ask for double-cylinder deadbolts on home office doors, and we won’t install them — it’s a code issue and a real safety problem if something happens while you’re alone in the room. Single-cylinder, thumb-turn inside, every time.
5. Don’t Forget the Strike Plate
The lock is only as strong as what it latches into. A standard strike plate uses half-inch screws into the door frame — fine for privacy, useless against a shoulder. We swap in three-inch screws that bite into the wall stud behind the jamb. Five-minute upgrade, huge difference. This is the same approach we take when we do gate lock service in encino for exterior side gates.
6. Plan for the Cable Pass-Through
Home offices have monitors, dock stations, ethernet runs, and sometimes a printer in the closet. If you’re going to lock the door, you need to think about what gets cut off when the door closes. We’ve seen clients run a CAT6 line under the door and crush it the first week. A doorway cable pass-through or a small under-door gap kit solves it.
7. Get the Backset Right
Interior doors usually use a 2-3/8″ backset; exterior doors use 2-3/4″. If you buy a lock from the Home Depot on Sepulveda and it doesn’t fit the existing holes, that’s usually why. We bring both sizes to every job, plus a template kit for doors that have never been drilled.
One More Local Note
If you’re in an HOA — common in some of the gated communities off Hayvenhurst — check the bylaws before changing exterior-facing hardware. Interior office locks are almost never restricted, but it’s worth a glance.
For more on what we cover across the neighborhood, see our full list of Encino locksmith services. If you want us to come take a look at your office door, give the Locksmith HQ team a call at (818) 398-9391 — we can usually get someone out the same day, and we’ll bring the right hardware for whatever door you’ve got.
