Do you really need to anchor furniture? Yes, and the CPSC's numbers are why

The numbers

The CPSC publishes an annual tip-over report and summarized the 2023 edition in a February 2024 release. From 2013 through July 2023 it recorded 217 tip-over fatalities across all ages; 47 percent involved a television and 55 percent involved children between one and three years old. Children were 71 percent of the deaths. On injuries, the CPSC estimates 17,800 people a year treated in emergency departments for tip-overs, 44 percent of them children under 18, which it phrases as a child treated every 53 minutes. Dressers, chests and bureaus alone send an estimated 1,800 children to emergency rooms each year. The injury is a crush: a one-year-old pulls up on a drawer, a two-year-old climbs the open drawers like a ladder, the center of gravity moves past the front feet, and a hundred-pound piece of furniture comes down on a thirty-pound child. It is not rare and it is not exotic. The CPSC runs a campaign called Anchor It! because the fix is a strap and a screw.

What the STURDY rule covers, and what it doesn't

In 2023 the CPSC adopted ASTM F2057-23 as a mandatory federal standard for clothing storage units (dressers, armoires, wardrobes), effective September 1, 2023. New units have to pass stability tests on carpet, with loaded drawers, with multiple drawers open, and with a simulated child of up to 60 pounds interacting with them. That is a real improvement for dressers manufactured after that date. It does nothing for the dresser you already own, the bookcase (not a clothing storage unit), the TV stand, the changing table, the tall cabinet or the television itself. And the CPSC's own release, announcing the rule, ends with the recommendation that consumers anchor furniture, including dressers, securely to the wall. A compliant dresser is more stable; it is still anchored.

IKEA, short dressers, heavy pieces: the exceptions

IKEA. IKEA dressers ship with a wall-anchoring kit and instructions to use it, after tip-over deaths involving its Malm line led to a recall and settlement. Use the kit. If it is missing, the products below do the same job. Short dressers. A three-drawer dresser can tip when the top drawer is open and a child hangs from it; the standard tests up to 60 pounds of child on an open drawer for a reason. Anchor it. Heavy pieces. Weight is not stability. A solid-wood bookcase with the heavy books on top is more top-heavy, not less. Anchor it. The two honest exceptions: a piece that is already bolted to the wall (built-ins, a wall-mounted TV on a rated bracket), and a piece so low and deep that it cannot reach a tipping angle, like a coffee table. Everything taller than a toddler that a toddler can pull on gets a strap. What a strap is, versus a bracket, is in anti-tip straps vs brackets.

Why it has to be a stud

The wall end of an anchor holds a tipping load, which is a sharp pull outward. Drywall is half an inch of gypsum; a screw in it alone pulls out with the dresser attached. The screw needs a wood stud, or a masonry anchor rated for pull-out in plaster or brick. Every anchor here says so in its instructions, and the CPSC's Anchor It! guidance says to use the hardware in the kit and a stud. If the stud is not behind the dresser, move the dresser or use a horizontal cleat screwed across two studs. The wall-by-wall detail is in furniture anchors for drywall, plaster and brick, and the step-by-step is how to anchor a dresser. If you rent, the real answer is still a screw; the conversation to have is in anchoring furniture in a rental.

The two anchors to buy