This article develops a conceptual framework that prompts new lines of enquiry and questions for security researchers. We advance the notion of ‘everyday security’, which encompasses both the lived experiences of security processes and the related practices that people engage in to govern their own safety. Our analysis proceeds from a critical appraisal of several dominant themes within current security research, and how ‘everyday security’ addresses key limitations therein. Everyday experiences and quotidian practices of security are then explored along three key dimensions: temporality, spatial scale and affect/emotion. We conclude by arguing that the study of everyday security provides an invaluable critical vantage point from which to reinvigorate security studies and expose the differential impacts of both insecurity and securitization.