When you’re in the market for door locks, you might not think about having all the locks keyed the same. You’ll save time and money by planning ahead, if you do. In most cases the keying is free. If not, there is a nominal charge.
There are many options available for keying your home or business. The first is having all of the locks keyed alike, using the same key. You could also use groups, meaning group one is keyed alike and group two is keyed alike, but group two is different than group one. The third option is using a master key. This means all the locks have different keys, but there is one master key to open every lock.
Keying: When to Use
Times you might want alike keys would be in a home, with your front door, back door, and garage doors all keyed the same. A time you might want key groups would be if you are a contractor building many homes at once and you want to order all of your locks together. We can key alike building one, two, and three, but all different from each other. A time you might want master keying would be for an apartment building. Each front door has their own key, but as the building owner, you can get into any of the doors with the master key.
The other scenario is when there are already locks on your property but you want to add more. If you communicate the key number (usually five digits, but sometimes six) of your existing locks to us, we can key the new order to match the previous order or existing locks. Please keep in mind, we will need to know the brand of hardware or keyway you are using. Not all brands use the same shape of key. It is not possible to tell the brand or keyway by the key number alone.
Common Keyways
One of the most common keyways is the Schlage C. Of the 19 lock brands we sell on hardwarehut.com, 16 use the Schlage C as their standard keyway.
All of these brands use the Schlage C as their standard: Schlage Residential/Schlage Commercial, Emtek, Longleaf Collection, Acorn, Brass Accents, Dexter, Omnia, Valli & Valli, Grandeur by Nostalgic, Inox by Unison, Sun Valley Bronze, Sure-Loc, Marks, Codelocks, Kaba, and Townsteel.
Weslock uses their own keyway but can key to Kwikset and the Schlage C. First Watch uses a Weiser keyway. Brinks uses Kwikset as their standard but has the option to do the Schlage C. While Emtek does the Schlage C as their standard, they also can do Weiser on request.
If you have any questions, please reach out to us or connect with us via social media.
Featured Image from Schlage.
