Nursery Furniture

How to choose a cot or cot bed

The cot is the single most important purchase in a nursery, because a baby spends more hours there than anywhere else.

• A cot bed converts to a toddler bed by removing one side, extending its use to roughly four or five years. That usually works out cheaper than buying a cot then a toddler bed separately.
• Check the base has adjustable heights. A high base saves your back with a newborn; lowering it as they learn to sit and pull up is what stops them climbing out.
• Look for teething rails: plastic strips along the top edges. Babies chew cot rails, and without them the wood gets damaged and splinters.
• A drawer underneath is genuinely useful in a small room, where storage is usually the constraint.
• Check it meets BS EN 716, the British and European safety standard for cots.

Cot safety: what matters most

These points come from established UK safety guidance and are worth following regardless of which cot you buy.

• The mattress must fit with no gap larger than about 2cm at any side. Gaps are a genuine entrapment risk, buy the mattress made for the cot where possible.
• Buy the mattress new, even if the cot itself is second-hand. The Lullaby Trust advises a firm, flat, waterproof and well-fitting new mattress.
• Bar spacing should be between 4.5cm and 6.5cm, wide enough that a head can't become trapped, narrow enough that a body can't slip through.
• Nothing soft in the cot. No pillows, duvets, bumpers or cot toys for under-ones. A clear, flat cot is the safest sleep surface.
• Position it away from windows, blind cords, radiators, curtains and anything a child could reach and pull in.
• Check the fixings every few months. Cots loosen with use and a wobble is a signal, not a nuisance.

Safer sleep basics

Current UK guidance is to place babies on their back to sleep, feet to the foot of the cot, in a clear cot with no loose bedding, in the same room as you for the first six months, including for daytime naps. Keep the room between 16 and 20°C. The Lullaby Trust publishes the full guidance and it's worth reading before the baby arrives rather than in the first exhausted week.

How to choose a cot mattress

• Firm and flat, not soft. A mattress that moulds to the baby is not what you want, whatever it says about comfort.
• Foam or sprung both work. Sprung mattresses generally last longer through a cot bed conversion; foam is lighter and cheaper.
• Waterproof layer or a separate protector. Non-negotiable in practice, and it extends the mattress's usable life considerably.
• Check the size against the cot, not against a standard, cot dimensions vary and a near-fit is not a fit.
• Replace between children where you can, or at minimum use a new waterproof protector.

How to set up a nursery in a small room

• The cot goes in first. Position it away from hazards, then work everything else around it
• Under-cot storage earns its keep more than a chest of drawers in a genuinely small room
• A changing mat on a chest of drawers works as well as a dedicated changing table and is useful for years afterwards
• Secure tall furniture to the wall. Any chest, bookcase or shelf in a child's room needs an anti-tip fixing, children climb drawers
• Blackout blinds without cords, or with cords properly secured out of reach