Childproofing Cost Calculator

About $525 to fit the high-risk items in an 1,800 square foot house, $415 in a 1,000 square foot home and $750 in a 3,500 square foot one. A comprehensive job adding window stops, hearth padding and custom gates is $950 in a typical house. An assessment with a written list and no installation is $145. Reported figures put full-home installation at $250 to $1,200 with an average of $500, consultations at $50 to $150, and averages by home type of about $180 for an apartment, $350 for a small single-family home and $750 for a large one.

Anchor the furniture, then gate the stairs. Every dresser, chest, bookcase and television taller than it is wide needs strapping into a stud with steel brackets, because children open drawers and climb them and the piece becomes a lever — and the nylon strap in the box is close to worthless in hollow drywall. Then stair gates top and bottom, with the top one hardware-mounted without exception. Then shorten every blind cord, move the chemicals to a high shelf in another room rather than latching the cupboard, and latch the cabinets that still matter. Outlet covers come sixth and are what almost everybody buys first.

Worth buying the assessment, usually, and worth paying for the installation selectively. For $145 somebody walks your house at a toddler's eye level, finds what you have stopped seeing and hands you a room-by-room list in priority order — and many companies waive that fee if you then hire them. With the list, a practical parent can do most of it in a weekend for about $120 of hardware. Pay for the hardware-mounted gates, anything mounting to a banister, furniture anchoring where you cannot find studs, upstairs window guards, and honestly anything you would otherwise not get around to: a gate in a box in the garage protects nobody.

Hardware-mounted at the top of stairs, always, and this is the one specification on the page with no exceptions. A pressure-fit gate is held in place by friction against the frame, so a child leaning or pulling on it can take the gate and themselves down the staircase. Pressure gates are fine across a doorway on a level floor, where the worst outcome is the gate falling over. A hardware-mounted gate screws into the studs or the frame and swings, and the extra-tall versions run $80 to $120.

Use heavy-duty toggle bolts rather than the plastic plugs that came in the kit, and treat it as one of the jobs worth paying somebody for. A toggle spreads the load behind the drywall and will hold far more than an expanding plug, which pulls straight out under the shock load of a child swinging on a drawer. In plaster and lath, or masonry, the fixing is different again. What you should not do is screw into drywall alone and consider the job done — that gives the appearance of anchoring without the function, which is worse than knowing it is not anchored.

Yes, because it changes what gets fitted rather than only how much. A crawling baby under a year needs floor and reach level: outlet covers, cabinet doors, cords, and the stair gate fitted before they can use the stairs rather than after. A walking, climbing one to four year old needs all of that plus everything that can be climbed, pulled over or opened from standing — so furniture anchoring and window limiters become the bulk of the job, and that is the expensive age. Several children a few years apart means both lists, and it means the older one opening gates for the younger one.

No, and this is the most commonly misunderstood item in the subject. A window screen is insect mesh in a light frame and will not hold a child's weight — it is designed to keep flies out, not people in. Upstairs windows need either a stop that limits the opening to about four inches, or a window guard rated to hold a child. Both are cheap, around $10 to $20 a window, and the consequence of getting this one wrong is the worst on any childproofing list. It applies to any window a child can reach, including the ones behind furniture they can climb.

A pool is a different category of risk and it comes before everything else on this page. The answer is a four-sided isolation fence at least four feet high with a self-closing, self-latching gate that opens outward, separating the water from the house rather than just enclosing the yard. Door alarms, pool covers and water alarms are useful additions to that and are not substitutes for it. It is a project of its own, usually subject to local code requirements, and it is not what a childproofing service means by a comprehensive package.

About $120 for a typical house, which is the strongest argument for buying the assessment rather than the installation. Magnetic cabinet latches are $3 to $6 each, outlet covers about $5 for a dozen, door knob covers and corner guards a few dollars each, toilet locks and cord cleats similar. The two real costs are the gates at $55 to $120 each hardware-mounted, and steel furniture anchor brackets. Window stops are $10 to $20 a window. Buy the brackets and gates properly and economize on the small plastic items, which is the opposite of how most people shop.

An assessment is about an hour and a half including the write-up. The essentials package in a typical house is most of half a day — around three and a half hours of work once the walkthrough and demonstrating the latches are counted. A comprehensive job in a larger house runs to a full day. The step at the end matters more than it sounds: ask to be shown how every gate and latch operates before they leave, because the ones nobody can work get propped open within a month and then protect nothing.