Best door knob covers and lever locks: keep the toddler out of the garage, the bathroom and the basement

Which doors get a lock

A door lock is a targeted product. The garage (car, tools, chemicals), the basement stairs, the bathroom (the toilet, the tub, the medicine), the laundry room (detergent pods), the home office, the door to the yard or the pool, and the front door once the child can reach the handle. That is usually four to six doors. Every other door in the house should stay usable, because a knob cover slows the adult carrying a baby too, and a cover that annoys you gets taken off. The pool door specifically wants an alarm as well as a lock, covered in how to childproof a pool.

Knob or lever

A knob cover is two plastic halves that clip around a round knob; the cover spins freely in a small hand, and an adult turns the knob through grip holes or by squeezing the cover. It does nothing on a lever handle. A lever lock is an adhesive-mounted arm beside the handle that swings under the lever so it cannot be pushed down; a hidden squeeze or slide releases it. It does nothing on a knob. Look at every door you want to lock before buying, and expect a mix: many homes have knobs on old interior doors and levers on newer ones.

The pull-it-apart problem

Every knob cover works the same way until a child learns that the two halves come apart. Basic covers are held by clips that adults squeeze; a determined two-year-old learns the squeeze by watching, or simply pulls hard enough. Wappa Baby's cover adds a second locking tab so the halves cannot be separated without a deliberate two-step release, which is why it ranks first; Prince Lionheart's squeeze-and-turn is the best of the basic designs at the lowest price; Jool's and Safety 1st's are plain and fine for a child under two. Lever locks have a different weakness: the child watches you release it. Safety 1st's OutSmart lever lock puts a decoy button on the face for exactly that reason.

How we ranked these

Default weights. No maker in this category states a standard, so the ranking turns on resistance (the dual lock and the decoy), installation truth (Wappa publishes its lever lock's required flat area, Jool does not) and value. Rubric on how we choose. Door pinch guards, which are a different product for a different injury, are in babyproofing the living room.

The both-sides warning

Wappa Baby prints it on its lever lock page: once activated, the product locks the door from both sides, and a caregiver must have access to the lock to deactivate it. That is true of every lever lock and most knob covers on an interior door. So never put one on a door a child could be behind alone: a bedroom, or a bathroom the child can already reach. The lock is for keeping the child out of a room, not in one. The bathroom in particular needs the lock on the outside of the door and a toilet lock inside, per babyproofing the bathroom.

Who should skip all of these