How to select the perfect safety gate

Get peace of mind with a safety gate

A safety gate is a great aid when it comes to child-proofing your home when your child is starting to craw and walk. A safety gate allows you to child proof stairs, fireplaces and doors, as well as lock off entire rooms or certain areas in a room to protect your child from potential hazards.

If you have one or more of the abovementioned areas in your home, it is important that you install a safety gate. In fact, the sooner the better! Before you know it, your child will begin moving around the home on their own, and then anything could happen. It only takes a split second of being left alone for your little rascal to get into trouble, so the sooner you decide to child proof your home, the better.

Below you will find a guide for how to choose the most suitable type of safety gate for your situation.

1. Where do you want to install the safety gate?

The first thing you need to consider is where you want to use your safety gate. Where in your home is there a risk that your child might get hurt? Do you need to close a room off and use a safety gate to block access through a door? Do you have a wood burning stove, a fireplace or stairs? Maybe the safety gate is to be used as a room divider, so that the kitchen is a child-free zone when no adults are nearby? Do you only want to use the safety gate in one specific place, or do you want something more flexible that can be moved around and used it in multiple places?

It makes a difference whether a safety gate is to be installed on a door, at stairs, around a fireplace or as a room divider. Only few are actually aware of this, but it even makes a difference, whether your gate is placed at the top of the stairs or at the bottom of the stairs. This is because our safety gates are made specifically for various locations around the home so that they can best protect your child. Therefore, it is important that you choose a safety gate that matches its specific purpose exactly. 

To make it easier for you to find the right safety gate, we have divided our gates into safety gates for doors, safety gates for fireplaces and wood burning stoves, safety gates for the bottom of the stairs and safety gates for the top of the stairs in the product overview section in our online store.

"What is a safety gate?"

With a safety gate, you can prevent your child from accessing areas where you think accidents might occur. The safety gate can also prevent the child from falling down stairs, getting burnt by touching the wood burning stove or entering rooms that are not suitable for little ones. All of BabyDan’s safety gates include doors that are easy to open for adults but impossible to open for children.

See all safety gates

2. Remember to measure!

Once you have decided where the safety gate is to be installed, you must remember to measure the opening (what we call the “opening measurements”) that the safety gate needs to cover. This way you can be sure that you are choosing a safety gate that will fit. It also ensures that it can be installed correctly, so that it works as intended and keeps your child safe.

If you are installing a safety gate for a door, you must measure the distance between the door frames. The vast majority of safety gates need to be installed inside the door frames. However, some safety gates can also be installed on the outside. This applies to BabyDan EBBA, BabyDan ALMA, BabyDan Guard Me, BabyDan FlexiFit, BabyDan ELIN and all BabyDan OLAF and BabyDan Flex products.

If you want to install a safety gate around a wood burning stove or fireplace, you need to remember to measure some distance away from the stove/fireplace. Start your measurement at least 75 cm away from a wood burning stove and at least 90 cm away from an open fireplace. This ensures that your child is kept at a safe distance and cannot get too close to the hot flames. At the same time, you also ensure that the safety gate does not become too hot to touch.

"Opening measurement - what is that?"

When looking at safety gates on our online store, you will see two measurements: “Smallest opening measurements” and “Maximum opening measurements.” These two measurements mean that the safety gate needs to be installed in an opening that is within those two dimensions. You can see a safety gate’s opening measurements on its product page under “Specifications”. The smallest opening measurement is the width that the door opening, hallway or stairs must have at minimum for the gate to fit. The maximum opening measurement is the maximum width that the door opening, hallway or stairs can have for the gate to fit.

For example, you can see that the smallest opening measurement for BabyDan Premier, white is 73.5 cm and the maximum opening measurement is 79.6 cm. This means that if you want to use BabyDan Premier for a door, the width of the door opening must be between 73.5 cm - 79.6 cm.

 

3. What type of safety gate?

Once you have decided where in the home you want to install a safety gate, you must consider what type of safety gate you want. There are different types of safety gates, depending on the way they are installed. At BabyDan, we divide safety gates into two types: wall mounted safety gates and pressure mounted safety gates.

Wall mounted safety gates

A wall mounted safety gate needs to be installed with screws on the walls or in the door frame. We always recommend choosing a wall mounted safety gate if you are installing it at the top of the stairs. We believe that this is the safest choice, even though pressure mounted safety gates have also been approved for use at the top of stairs.

Remember to pay attention to whether you have sills or high panels. This may have implications when it comes to installing a wall mounted safety gate.

If you want to install a safety gate around a wood burning stove or a fireplace, you must use one of our BabyDan OLAF or BabyDan Flex safety gates - they are all wall mounted. They come in many different sizes, so you can almost certainly find one that works with your specific wood burning stove or fireplace.

Do you want to be able to move your wall mounted safety gate? No problem! You can buy extra wall fittings and install them in the areas of your home where you want to use the safety gate. That allows you to easily remove the safety gate from one set of fittings and click it in place on another set. If, for example, you want to use the safety gate both at home and in your summerhouse, you can install fittings in both locations and take the safety gate with you, where you need it. However, please keep in mind that the opening measurements must be similar in the places where you want to use your safety gate.

Pressure mounted safety gates

If you do not want to drill holes, you can choose a pressure mounted safety gate. These gates are held in place via pressure between the walls, without needing to use screws or leaving marks on walls or door frames. Remember to pay attention to whether you have sills or high panels, as this may have implications for the installation of your wall mounted safety gate.

The vast majority of BabyDan’s pressure mounted gates have an integrated safety indicator that shows whether a pressure mounted safety gate is installed safely. You can find the safety indicator between the handle and the safety gate. It looks like a little red plastic stick, which will be visible, if the safety gate is not under enough pressure. If you can still see the red indicator between the handle and the safety gate after you have installed it, you need to tighten the safety gate further. You can also use the safety indicator to check on an ongoing basis whether the safety gate is still securely attached.

The following pressure mounted safety gates do not come with a safety indicator:

Once you have installed one of these safety gates, you just need to use other methods to see, if they are installed correctly.

If you have a BabyDan SlimFit or a BabyDan LISE safety gate, there can at most be 1 mm between the wall cup and spindle.

If you have a BabyDan Perfect Close or a BabyDan ANNE safety gate, there can at most be 1 mm between the handle and the safety gate.

When you install a BabyDan DesignerGate safety gate, you have to use a so-called fish weight and a normal pressure indicator at the bottom. This allows you to measure whether the safety bar is installed with the correct amount of pressure. If the indicator shows a pressure between 4-5, then you have installed it correctly.

No matter how you verify that your pressure mounted safety gate is installed correctly, it is important that you do so on an ongoing basis. This way you can ensure that the safety gate is properly protecting your child.

If you would prefer having a safety gate that you can move around as you like, then a pressure mounted safety gate is the obvious choice. This type of safety gate is more flexible, and you can easily and quickly move it around as many times as you need to. So, you can bring it along to your summerhouse, when visiting the grandparents or wherever else you go.

"Can you extend and shorten a safety gate?"

Yes, some safety gates are easy to extend and shorten. This can be a great feature if, for example, you are moving into a new home or if you would like to be able to move and use the safety gate in different homes with different opening measurements.

Some of the safety gates can cover a wide range of opening measurements. Typically, these will be wall mounted safety gates. All BabyDan Flex and BabyDan OLAF safety gates can be extended indefinitely using additional sections. You can buy the safety gates in various sizes and purchase additional sections to extend your gate at any time.

Other gates (in their standard versions) can only be used for a limited range of opening measurements. This typically applies to pressure mounted safety gates. You can extend these gates with BabyDan Extend A Gate extenders and shorten them with the BabyDan Reduce A Gate kit. Some safety gates can be bought in bundles with a certain number of extenders, and you can also easily buy the extenders separately. If you want to shorten a safety gate, you should buy the Reduce A Gate kit separately.

 

4. What design should I pick?

The design of the safety gate has no impact on its safety - however, the design is a factor when it comes to matching your home’s décor and making your safety gate blend in, so you barely even notice it.

Most BabyDan safety gates are made of metal, but there are also some made from wood. We also have two foldable safety gates, BabyDan ALMA and BabyDan Guard Me , which are made of plastic panels. The material your gate is made of has no impact on its safety - wooden safety gates are just as safe as metal safety gates. It is really just a matter of taste.

The same goes for the colour of your safety gate. The majority of our metal safety gates come in black and white colours, but some are also silver coloured. The wooden safety gates’ colour can also vary depending on the type of wood they are made from. You can typically choose between cherry or beech wood. 

“Why are safety gates important?”

A safety gate can prevent your child from getting into an accident, such as falling down the stairs or getting burnt by touching the wood burning stove, or from entering rooms, where there are things not safe for a child. Therefore, it is important that you use a safety gate as soon as your child starts to crawl.

Our Safety Standards

5. Installation of safety gates

It is extremely important that you follow the instructions when installing a safety gate. After all, this will ensure that you are meeting the safety standards and avoid that your child, for example, gets stuck and ends up getting hurt.

In order to make it as easy as possible for you to ensure that you are installing the safety gate correctly, we have developed the Onbox app, which has step-by-step videos to guide you through the installation process.

Learn more about Onbox

Different homes and families require different solutions/safety gates

No families or homes are exactly the same, and therefore we are making a lot of different BabyDan safety gates to fit various locations around in the home and with different designs and materials. After all, it is important that you get a safety gate that is the exact fit for your requirements so that it keeps your little one as safe as possible.

No matter which safety gate you decide to install,  you can be completely certain that the safety gate does not contain any kinds of harmful substances. In fact, all of BabyDan’s safety gates are so safe that your child can easily suck on them without getting chemicals and other unwanted substances into the body.

 

 

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