Screw-fit stair gates, as the name suggests, require some drilling and screwing to securely attach them to the wall, staircase or door frame. Once we’d selected the 14 best stair gates for our shortlist, our tester, Katja Lakha, installed them one at a time in her home. Katja is a busy mum with three children (girls aged one and four, and a seven-year-old boy), so each gate was put through its paces. The gates were tested for at least one to two weeks each in busy areas of Katja’s home.

Gate, Hardware Mount - Qdos Safety Crystal® Designer Baby Gate, Hardware Mount - Qdos Safety

Mesh parts of gates should be tightly woven together so that fingers and body parts cannot go through.CR. 2022. Consumer Reports. Safety Gate Buying Guide. https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/safety-gates/buying-guide/index.htm Opens a new window [Accessed February 2023] Zielinski et al. Pediatrics, 2012 Apr;129(4):721-7. Stair-related injuries to young children treated in US emergency departments, 1999-2008. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22412031/ Opens a new window [Accessed February 2023] When your baby starts to move around independently, it’s important that they are safe. Areas of your home that were not a problem when you had a newborn, such as stairs, a fireplace or the kitchen, suddenly look very exciting to a crawling or toddling baby. The most popular recommendations were pulled together to include in a longlist of approximately 30 stair gates, then whittled down to form our final shortlist. How we tested the stair gates Meets safety standards - Complies or exceeds requirements of EN1930, the safety standard for safety barriers including stair gates as well all the relevant clauses of the toy standard EN71Series.

Acrylic Gates For Stairs | Wayfair Acrylic Gates For Stairs | Wayfair

An opening mechanism that can be operated with one hand, so that you can safely use the gate while carrying a baby or toddler Screw-fit gates are more secure and stable for use on stairs, particularly at the top of the stairs. There is a danger that a child could lean on a pressure-fit stair gate and cause it to come loose or fall. It’s also not advised to use the retracting mesh/concertina gates at the tops of stairs due to their material being more flimsy and their connections less secure. The mesh ones that you just need one hand for are better, some gates are ridiculous, we accidentally bought one that takes 2 hands to open so impossible when holding a baby.” (Stair gate design recommended by Mumsnetter, SnuggyBuggy) Our verdict Yes, in fact the Crystal Designer Hardware Mount Baby Gate has a unique removable Quarter Round Spacer at the bottom of the FastMount™ Rails. + What is the best way to clean my Crystal Designer Baby Gate?Tall safety gates: If your tiny tots are blessed with long legs or an adventurous spirit, it is worth shopping for extra tall gates to keep little escape artists safe. Although the Safety 1st SecureTech Flat Step Safety Gate is the only pressure-fit gate that claims to be able to be used at the top of a staircase, we still think it’s preferable to use a screw-fit, wall mounted gate wherever possible. This leaves far less room for error and, once the gate is installed correctly, it won’t shift. There’s also no ground bar to cause a trip hazard.

Stair Gates 2023 | UK Reviews By YourTot The Best Stair Gates 2023 | UK Reviews By YourTot

But what parents love most about this gate is how it opens and closes. You open the gate by pressing the a button and lifting the gate's handle, an operation that's very easy to perform one-handed. If you let the gate go, it swings shut and latches automatically. You can also push it open more than 90 degrees and it stays open by itself, an extraordinarily useful feature when you need to go through the gate repeatedly. Baby gates with a door: Do you share your home with pets? If so you risk sabotaging your cats roaming space, so look for gates with pet flaps. Although the BabyDan Guard Me is safe for use anywhere in your home, the best stair gate for use at the top of the stairs is the Safety 1st Wall Fix Extending Metal Gate, which is also the best screw-fit stair gate we tested. Some are made from wood, others are made of painted metal. Some are referred to as being step-free, meaning they don’t have a bar along the bottom of the frame, others have a raised lip. The latter provides a more robust frame, but can present a trip hazard.

What type of safety gate is best for the top of the stairs?

As soon as they discover they have freedom to move, they’ll be off and babies move faster than you’d think. Having a stair gate either installed or ready to install means you won’t be caught by surprise. What types of baby gates are there? The downside to a stair gate is that they can be bulky and look cluttered, however the safety benefits of them outweigh this massively. There are even stair gates that can divide a large or open plan room, or fit around a fireplace. And finally, remember that the use of a baby gate does not replace proper supervision of your baby. Gates can be a handy helper, but there’s nothing like an attentive parent to keep babies out of trouble. Dr. Fielkow advises parents to install safety gates as soon as children show signs of crawling. The American Academy of Pediatrics agrees, recommending safety gates at the top and the bottom of stairs Opens a new windowwhen your child is learning to crawl and walk. Zeb Timmons, M.D., Opens a new window Division Chief of Emergency Medicine at Children’s Hospital & Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska, says gates should be installed when their baby is around 6 to 7 months old instead of waiting for a developmental cue.