Babyproofing the nursery: this is the room where your child is alone the longest, and the fixes are mostly about position

Why this room is different

Every other room on this site is a room you are in with your child. The nursery is the room where you close the door and leave, for a nap, for the night, and for the twenty minutes in the morning when a toddler is awake before anyone else is.

That changes the standard. In a kitchen, a latch that buys you thirty seconds is useful because you are standing there. In a bedroom, anything that only buys time is not doing the job: the fix has to hold unattended for hours. It is the one room where we would say remove the hazard rather than manage it, every time the choice exists.

Where the crib goes

Draw a circle around the crib the length of a toddler's arm plus the length of anything that dangles, and nothing in that circle should be reachable, grabbable or climbable. In practice:

Away from windows. Not beside, not under. A window is a fall risk once a child can climb the crib rail, blind cords hang there, and the sill is a shelf for anything small. Window guards and stops are covered on how to childproof windows.

Away from shelves and wall art. A floating shelf above a crib is a thing that can fall into a crib. So is a heavy frame, a mobile once the child can reach it, and a mirror.

Away from lamps, monitors and cords. The monitor cord is the one people forget: it needs to be at least three feet from the crib and routed so no loop reaches inside the rail. Cord shorteners and covers are on how to babyproof cords.

Away from the radiator. Both for burns and because a radiator is a step.

In the crib itself, keep it bare. A firm mattress with a fitted sheet, and no pillows, bumpers, heavy blankets or soft toys for a baby under one. That is the standard American Academy of Pediatrics guidance on safe sleep and it outranks everything else in this room.

The dresser and the changing table

A nursery dresser is usually the tallest piece of furniture a child meets, it is next to a surface they learn to climb, and it often has a changing mat on top with interesting things on it. It is the classic tip-over.

Anchor it to a stud, with the strap pulled taut so the piece cannot rock forward before the anchor catches. New clothing storage units sold in the US have to pass a federal stability test and ship with a restraint - the detail is on the STURDY Act explained - but compliance is not a reason to leave the strap in the bag. A changing table counts too, and so does a bookcase, which no standard covers. The method is on how to anchor a dresser.

Two habits go with it: keep the drawers shut so the piece cannot be climbed, and never put a television on a dresser in a child's room.

The cord by the window

If one thing in this guide gets done today, make it this. A looped blind or curtain cord hangs at exactly the height of a standing toddler's neck, it is in nearly every bedroom, and the CPSC has counted children under five strangled by window covering cords year after year.

The permanent answer is cordless window coverings in any room a child sleeps or plays in. The answer for today, free, is to cut a continuous loop or tie it up out of reach, then fit a cleat or a cord wrap high on the wall so the cord cannot come back down. The full treatment is on blind cord safety, and the hardware is ranked on best blind cord anchors and cleats.

What to buy for this room

The week the crib becomes a bed

The move to a toddler bed changes the whole room, because for the first time your child can get out of it at 2 a.m. and go anywhere. Do these the same week:

Re-walk the room at floor level, in the dark, as a child who has just climbed out. Small objects, a bin, a basket of toys with a drawstring, anything that was fine when the room was a crib and a chair.

Deal with the stairs. A child who can leave a bed can reach a staircase. If the bedroom is upstairs, this is the moment for a hardware-mounted gate at the top, and the ranked options are on best baby gates for stairs.

Fit the bed rail properly if you use one. The hazard with bed rails is the gap between the rail and the mattress, not the fall, which is why the rail has to suit the bed you own; best bed rails and bed guards for toddlers covers the fit question.

Decide about the door. A foam pinch guard stops the door closing on fingers and stops it blowing shut; a knob cover or lever lock on the outside is a choice with a real trade-off, because a child who cannot open their own door also cannot leave a room in a fire. We would use the pinch guard and leave the handle alone.

The ten-minute version

Crib on an interior wall, bare, away from cords and climbable furniture. Dresser and changing table anchored, drawers shut. Every looped cord cut or cleated. Monitor cord three feet clear. Outlets behind furniture covered or replaced. Nothing heavy on a shelf above the sleeping space. Night light that does not run a cord across the floor. Door with a pinch guard.

Then do the room next door the same way, because the hazards in an adult bedroom - a tall wardrobe, a mirror leaning against the wall, medicines in a bedside drawer - are the ones nobody thinks to check. The mirror in particular is covered on best anti-tip kits for mirrors, and the whole-house order of work is the babyproofing checklist.