Best padlocks for sheds, gates and outdoor use: buyer's guide

Ever gone out to the shed after a wet weekend and found the padlock won't turn? That stiff, gritty feeling is rust getting a foothold, and it's usually the first sign that your supposed outdoor padlock was never really built for outdoor life in the first place.

Here's the thing about securing sheds, gates and garden stores in the UK: the weather is doing half the attacker's work for it. Rain often gets into the mechanism or, if you’re anywhere near the coast, salt air speeds up corrosion faster than most people expect. A padlock that looks tough in the shop can turn into a liability within a year if it wasn't designed for exposure.

Below, we give our expert advice on the best padlocks for gates, sheds and general outdoor use. 

If you just want the shortlist before reading on, here's every product covered in this guide, what it costs, and where it earns its place. 

A standard padlock and a proper outdoor padlock might look near-identical on a shelf, but the difference sits in the details you can't always see.

• Sealed or shrouded keyways that keep water and grit out of the pins
• Nano-coated or nickel-plated bodies that resist corrosion rather than just delaying it
• Hardened steel or boron alloy shackles built to shrug off bolt cutters and hacksaws
• Closed-shackle designs, which leave almost nothing exposed for an attacker to get leverage on

None of that happens by accident. Brands like Squire and ABUS build weatherproofing into the padlock from the design stage, not as an afterthought bolted on later, and you'll see this most clearly across our weatherproof padlocks range, and in the laminated padlocks built specifically to shrug off rain and rust. That's really the difference between a lock that lasts one damp winter and one that's still working smoothly five years from now. 

Why Does This Matter More for Gates Than You'd Think?

A gate padlock takes the full brunt of everything the sky throws at it, day and night, with zero cover. If you're searching for padlocks for gates specifically, weatherproofing is a must.

It's worth saying, too, that a locked gate does more than protect whatever's directly behind it. Police guidance on protecting your garden to safeguard your home points out that keeping side gates locked cuts off a burglar's easiest route to the back of the house, out of sight of the street. A gate padlock is a small purchase doing a fairly large job. 

For most standard shed hasps, a 50mm padlock body is the most common fit and a good default to start with. If you have a larger or heavier-duty hasp, you may need a bigger body or a longer shackle.

If you're not sure, measure the gap in your hasp before buying, which is the space the shackle needs to pass through. Our long shackle padlocks are worth a look if you have a non-standard fitting or need a bit more clearance to thread through a security chain as well. 

If you're weighing up options, it helps to know what you're actually comparing rather than just picking whatever's cheapest on the page. Here's a rough breakdown of what tends to separate entry-level outdoor padlocks from the premium end: 

It's rarely about one single feature doing all the work, but rather a combination of the coating, the shackle alloy and the seal around the keyway that decides whether your padlock is still trustworthy after its third winter outside. If CEN grades are new to you, our CEN grade padlocks collection breaks the scale down properly.

To put some of those weatherproof features into a real product rather than just a spec table, the Abus 70IB50 Weatherproof Padlock uses a solid brass body with fully non-corrosive internals, at £16.25, originally designed with boats and vehicles in mind, but just as happy on a shed or gate that catches the worst of the weather. 

Sheds hold everything from bikes and mowers to power tools worth a fair bit of money, so it's worth asking what you're actually protecting before you buy. A padlock guarding an old lawnmower doesn't need the same spec as one guarding a workshop full of cordless tools.

For most sheds, a closed-shackle diskus padlock hits the sweet spot. The disc shape barely gives an attacker anything to grip, saw at, or lever against, which makes it a strong deterrent against the smash-and-grab style of shed theft that tends to happen when nobody's home. Pair that with a CEN Grade 3 to 4 rating, and you've got a lock that's proportionate to what most sheds are storing. Our full shed padlocks range is built around exactly this kind of everyday outdoor security.

If you'd rather stick with a combination lock but want something between entry-level and top-tier, the Squire CP50 (£16.84) offers a 50mm die-cast alloy body with a hardened steel shackle and a dual compound cover for weather protection. Step up again and the Squire CBW85 (£37.43) brings an 85mm body and a boron-hardened steel shackle into play, built more for workshop doors and security chains than a garden shed, but worth knowing about if you're protecting something genuinely valuable. 

Need a Heavy-Duty Padlock Under £30 for Your Shed?

You don't need to spend a fortune to get real protection, and it helps to see actual options rather than a vague price range. The Squire 660 Old English Padlock comes in at £11.46, with a 64mm galvanised steel body, a forged steel shackle and a key-hole cover to keep the weather out: a genuinely no-fuss choice for a shed door.

If keyless is more your style, the Squire CP60 Combination Padlock sits at £23.80 and pairs a hardened steel shackle with a 5-wheel, 10,000-combination mechanism that's fully re-codable, so you're not stuck with a factory-set number forever. Both carry Squire's 10-year guarantee, which says something about how confident the manufacturer is that they'll still be doing their job in a decade. 

You should get a weather-resistant lock from a specialist who's actually tested what they sell, not just a general hardware aisle where padlocks are an afterthought next to the paint tins. Locks Direct has been supplying padlocks, including weatherproof padlocks UK-wide, for over 30 years, and every product in the range gets checked and tested before it goes anywhere near the shop.

For gates specifically, look for:

• A CEN Grade 3 to 4 rating as a sensible minimum for garden and driveway gates
• A combination lock if multiple people need access without juggling spare keys
• A keyed and restricted option if you'd rather control exactly who can get a copy cut 

If you want a concrete example rather than just a spec list, the Abus 83/55 Padlock is CEN Grade 4, built with a hardened steel shackle and body plus NANO Protect coating for corrosion resistance, and is specifically positioned for gates, garages and trailers. At £46.41, it sits toward the higher end, but a CEN 4 rating is also the kind of thing your home insurer might actually ask for if you're covering a driveway gate or side access.

If you're weighing up padlocks for gates, hunting for the best padlocks for sheds, or just trying to find a weatherproof padlock that'll actually survive a UK winter, the team at Locks Direct is on hand at 0800 542 1264 or via email to point you toward the right one for your situation. Sometimes the fastest way to get it right is just asking someone who deals with this every day.