This study aimed at appraising the level of security as a design consideration for a commercial building design such as shopping mall. This was geared towards coming up with guidelines for ‘Designing for Security’ in Lagos state Nigeria Shopping Centers. To achieve the objectives of the study, the author adopted a survey research design method. Qualitative approach used is based on the distribution of personally administered copies of questionnaires. Lagos was chosen as the area of study for some reasons. Lagos State is a highly populated and developed state in the western region of Nigeria, which is natively a Yoruba speaking state, but due to the availability of opportunity it has become extremely diverse. The result indicates that 62% of the sample a male while 38% are females. 66% of the sample have prior knowledge of security while 34% do not. The majority of the sample believes that security knowledge is needed for the design of malls within Lagos state. At the end of the study recommendations were given to enhance better designs of shopping malls in terms of security.

Keywords : Design; Security; Shopping mall; Commercial; Building; and Consideration.