Once your little one starts crawling, it’s time to batten down the hatches.

We lab test and review the latest safety gates and barriers to help you find the best child safety gate for you.

Our safety gate and barrier buying guide will help you decide which type of gate you need, and how we test explains our testing rigour.

We test a variety of expandable baby gates and barriers (typically pressure-mounted) to see which are best for your home and safest for your curious toddler, focusing on safety features and potential hazards such as strength, durability, projections and climbing footholds. There’s currently no Australian standard for safety gates, so we use an in-house method that draws upon clauses in other relevant Australian standards such as folding cots, as well as overseas standards.

Our expert testers give every safety gate and barrier a thorough workout to help find the models that:

• do not have hazardous gaps or footholds
• are strong and versatile
• have no dangerous gaps which could cause limb or head entrapment
• are easy to install and operate.

Our interactive comparison tool helps you find out which models will fit your installation space. Our Recommended list lets you see quickly which models come out on top.