Childproofing cabinets and drawers: the lock that actually holds on your doors

What to buy first

Nothing, for the first ten minutes: move the cleaners, the dishwasher pods, the medicines and the knives above 5 feet. Poison Control's 2024 data puts household cleaning substances at the top of the exposure list for children under six, and most of those substances live under the kitchen sink at the exact height of a sitting baby. Once the worst of it is high, the first lock goes on whatever is left under the sink, the second on the knife drawer, and the third on the cabinet with the trash. The product for those three is almost always a magnetic lock: it mounts inside, needs a key to open, and leaves nothing on the outside of the door for a child to work at. The ranking that covers every lock type is best cabinet locks for babyproofing, and the magnetic sets on their own are in best magnetic cabinet locks.

How the category divides

Cabinet locks divide by where they mount and what they mount to. Inside the door: magnetic locks and spring latches, both invisible from outside, one keyed and one not. Outside the door: adhesive strap locks and slide locks, both visible, both cheap, one for anything with a flat surface and one for paired handles. The whole taxonomy, with what each type is bad at, is cabinet lock types explained; the head-to-head most people actually need is magnetic vs adhesive cabinet locks, and the stick-on half of that on its own is best adhesive cabinet locks. Then the fit problem: knobs, D-handles and handleless doors each want a different lock, which is cabinet locks for knobs, handles and no hardware. Drawers are their own case because a child pulls a drawer with their whole weight, which is why best drawer locks ranks separately. And the stove is a different product entirely: knob covers, an oven lock and a stove guard, compared in best stove knob covers, oven locks and stove guards.

What decides the price

Count, mount and certification. A four-pack of strap locks lists around $8 to $10 at Jool or Wappa; a 12-lock magnetic set from Baby Proof Me lists $29.95, and a 20-lock set from Safety 1st $59.99, which is the highest price per lock on the site and buys the only JPMA certification statement we found among magnetic sets. Spring latches are cheapest of all, at about $5.49 for ten from Safety 1st, and they are the type the 80-piece kits are padded with. Stove knob covers run $9.99 for five at Jool, and a stove guard $24.99 at Prince Lionheart. The expensive line item is not any product but the adhesive's failure: a magnetic lock that comes off a cabinet in month three is a lock you buy twice, and the ones that come with optional screws are the ones that do not. Every price above is the maker's list price on the day we checked, linked on the product's spec table; Amazon sets its own.

The common mistake

Locking everything. A kitchen with twenty locked doors is one where the adults stop using the locks, and a lock that is left open is worse than none because it teaches you it is there. Lock the cabinets with chemicals, knives, glass and the trash, give the child one drawer of their own with plastic and dish towels in it, and leave the rest. The second mistake is trusting adhesive on the day it goes on: Baby Proof Me, the one maker that publishes a cure time, says 24 hours before the lock is loaded, and a lock yanked an hour after install is the classic failure. The third is putting a spring latch on a drawer; the latch is fine on a door and gets pulled out of a drawer. And renters skip the kitchen because they think it needs screws; it does not, per babyproof cabinets without drilling. The room in one walk, from the floor up, is babyproofing the kitchen.

Three more pages cover the parts of this room that are not cabinet doors. The oven and the dishwasher are bottom-hinged and a toddler beats both, which is on best oven and dishwasher locks. If a lock you already own keeps falling off, the surface prep and alignment are on how to install cabinet locks. And in a house with a cat as well as a baby, the locks that survive a claw are on best cabinet locks for cats.