The door decides, not the box
A great deal of smart-lock marketing is written around North American door preparation. Australian doors are not always the same — thickness, backset, cylinder standard and whether the door is timber, aluminium or glass all change what will physically fit and work.
This is why the useful conversation happens before the purchase. Once a hole is cut in the wrong place, the options get expensive.
Retrofit or replacement?
There are broadly two approaches, and the difference matters more than the brand.
- Retrofit — the existing hardware stays and only the cylinder or the internal thumbturn changes. Less invasive, cheaper, and it preserves a door you may not want to cut. Best when the existing lock is good.
- Replacement — the whole lockset changes for an integrated smart unit. More capability, more cutting, and the right answer when the existing hardware was going to be replaced anyway.
The question that separates a good lock from a bad one
Not "what can it do" but "what happens when it stops". Every electronic lock eventually loses power, and the difference between a good one and a bad one is entirely in what it does next.
- A good lock warns you for weeks, holds a mechanical key override, and often takes an emergency external power contact.
- A poor one goes flat with no warning and leaves you outside your own house.
- Which one you have is decided at purchase, not at 11pm on a Sunday.
Where a keypad is the wrong choice
On a shared entrance. A code that has been given to every resident, every former resident, every delivery driver and every tradesperson who has ever worked in the building is not access control — it is a doorbell with extra steps.
Shared entries are better served by fobs or a restricted key system, where access can be withdrawn from one person without changing anything for everybody else.
Short-stay and shared houses
This is where smart locks genuinely shine. A code per guest that expires on checkout removes the whole business of key handover, and it removes the risk that a key was copied at some point in the last two years.
It is worth pairing that with a plan for the day the wifi drops or the battery dies mid-stay, because that day will come.
If you have already bought one
Bring it out anyway. We will tell you honestly whether it suits the door before anything is cut, and that conversation is considerably cheaper before installation than after.