What does it mean to dream about padlock?
A padlock often points to something closed off, secured, or barred to you, so notice whether you held the key or stood shut out.
Four ways to read it
Each reading below comes from a named tradition and a cited source, so you can see where it came from and decide what fits your dream.
Freud
Freud would read the lock and its key as a familiar pairing of what is closed and what may open it, often bound up with desire and the forbidden. A padlock can stand for a wish kept under restraint.
After Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Brill trans., 1913), public domain.Jung
Jung might see the padlock as a closed part of the self, a door to the inner life that is barred until the right key is found. Whether you can open it can show your readiness to face what lies behind.
Jungian concept (our summary).Modern
Continuity ties a padlock to waking thoughts about access, privacy, and being shut in or shut out. A lock you cannot open often echoes a real barrier or a matter closed to you.
Continuity hypothesis (our summary).Mythological
The barred door and its hidden key run through myth as the threshold that only the chosen may pass and the lock that no force could break. To hold the key was to hold the right of passage.
Rosmerta Publishing editorial synthesis (after Bulfinch; Brewer).