A baby stair gate is a crucial part of general child safety in the home and is essential as soon as your infant starts crawling. Tots have a habit of sneaking off whenever you turn your back and generally head towards places you’d rather they avoid. It’s not always possible to keep your baby under continuous surveillance, which is why a baby stair gate is a perfect tool in helping to not only give you peace of mind but it also offers security to your child against the possible dangers of stairways, fire places and steps.
There will be umpteen areas in your home that you don’t believe safe for your child. Failure to ensure that there’s a baby stair gate in place may mean that you have to constantly watch your baby’s movements. This is not an easy task and is impossible for any parent to do twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
What should every parent ask themselves when deciding on which baby stair gate to choose? The main question should be, “Is the child stair gate easy for me to use and difficult for the child?” What more is there to know? You are probably thinking what about style, color and size? Yes these things interest a lot of people but the primary interest will be effectiveness of use.
Irrespective of your budget, it should be easy to find a baby stair gate to match. You’ll be glad to discover child stair gates are available in an extensive array of finishes including white metal, silver, wood, wood and metal and even aluminium making it feasible to find a child stair gate to fit your needs and match your interior decoration.
In general, baby stair gates start at widths of approx 60cm to as wide as 10m and tend to be roughly 1m in height.
There are a number of different types of child stair gate available. The type of gate and the benefits can be found below.
- Retractable Child Stair Gate – This type of gate is suitable for children up to 2 years old. These types of gates are usually quite expensive (maybe twice the price of normal child stair gates). They come with a roller blind on its side and made from a strong fabric which is able to take an impact of up to 100kg.
- Wooden Child Stair Gate – These are usually available in both screw fixing and pressure fitting style gates. Many people choose these types of gates as they look nice. The main draw back though is that they are susceptible to damage, especially by young dogs!
- Pressure Fitting Baby Stair Gate – These types of gates can be put in place easily as there is no need to use any screws or glues. This allows them to be moved around and used in various places. Pressure fitting gates are simple to use and extend outwards until they are stuck between door frames. These gates tend to be used to stop access between rooms and should not be used at the top of stairs.
- Screw Fitting Stair Gates – These gates are ideal for use at the top of staircases but can also be used in doorways. They tend to be easy to install but need to be fixed to the wall by screws. People tend to use these gates when they want to ensure that the gate will not come loose and that it fits the gap correctly.
- Automatically Closing Stair Gate – As the name might suggest these gates automatically close by themselves. These gates are ideal if you require that extra piece of mind knowing that you haven’t forgotten to lock the gate. They tend to be easy to install and are usually the pressure fitting variety.
- Travel Stair Gate – These gates usually weigh about 2/3kg are collapsible and are ideal for travelling. They are pressure fitting so require no screws or adhesive.
- Baby Stair Gate Extension Parts – Extension pieces are available for many child safety gates. These extensions help increase the area the gate is intended to protect. Please check the correct extension is used on the correct gate.