i don't know if i follow the logic about the "false sense of security" thing. in typical applications like say converting a bitcoin hex private key into a wif format, you are dealing with a 32 digit long hex number. like this one: 8147786C4D15106333BF278D71DADAF1079EF2D2440A4DDE37D747DED5403592
now the point is that you treat it however you want to but just because you assign more bits to each character doesn't mean it has more security. there are only the same number of such 32-length objects no matter what naming convention you use thus it doesn't matter how you represent them with regards to how many bytes they use for storage purposes.
There is a difference between using a different encoding and actually padding the bits you have with arbitrary values, and you are confusing these two.
Padding is when you add extra bits to for example if we are only producing 3 bits 1 with padding is 0b00000001 and the next value 2 with the same padding is 0b00000010. If we add these two we get 0b0000000100000010. But actually encoding the bits you have produced without padding will give you this: 001+010=0b001010
The hex you posted from a private key was produced by generating all bits in each byte without needing any pads. To do the same padding in this base means producing something like this: 0x008100470078...