Bunk bed and cot safety: the standards explained

Bunk beds and cots are the only furniture in a home with their own British and European safety standards, and the reason is entrapment: a gap that a child's body passes through but their head does not.

This guide sets out what BS EN 747 (bunk beds and high beds) and BS EN 716 (children's cots) require, written the way our fitters check it rather than the way the standard is drafted.

The single most common bunk fault we are called to correct is a guard rail that sits too low once the mattress is in. The standard measures the rail height above the top of the mattress, not above the bed base.

That means the mattress depth is part of the safety calculation. A deeper mattress than the maker allowed for silently converts a compliant bunk into a non-compliant one, which is why we check depth against the maker's stated maximum before signing off.

Both long sides of an upper bunk need protection, with only the ladder opening left clear, and that opening has its own maximum size.

Openings in the structure are controlled so that a small gap cannot trap a limb and a large gap cannot trap a head. It is the in-between sizes that are dangerous, which is why 'it looks fine' is not a test.

In practice we check the space between guard rail and mattress, the gaps between slats and rails, the ladder rung spacing and any decorative cut-outs in the headboard or footboard.

The ladder must be fixed at both ends so it cannot be lifted off or slide sideways under a climbing child. A ladder that hooks on and is not secured is the second most common fault we find.

Position matters too. An upper bunk should not sit under a pendant light, a shelf, a curtain pole or an openable window without a restrictor, and high sleepers usually need tying back to the wall — which is where the wall construction of the room becomes part of the build.

Manufacturers and safety bodies advise that the upper bunk of a bunk bed is not used by children under six. That is guidance rather than law, but it is written into the instructions of nearly every bunk sold in the UK, and ignoring it undermines any claim if something goes wrong.

In a let property, the same instructions form part of the furniture's safety information, so a landlord who has the bunk assembled correctly and photographed has evidence the guidance was followed.

BS EN 716 governs bar spacing, the depth from the mattress surface to the top of the cot side, and the mattress fit — the gap around the mattress edge should be small enough that a baby cannot become wedged in it.

Cots have two or three base heights. The highest is for a newborn who cannot sit up; the base must drop as the child grows, and the lowest setting is used once they can stand. We set the height to the age at build and tell you when it needs to change.

Cot-bed conversions use the manufacturer's own kit. A homemade conversion or a mixed set of parts from two cots is outside the standard entirely.

Every bolt torqued in sequence and the frame checked square, because a racked frame opens gaps that were compliant when the parts were flat on the floor.

Guard-rail height measured above the mattress in place, ladder fixings secured at both ends, gaps checked, and the maker's instruction booklet left with you rather than in the recycling — it carries the mattress depth limit you will need if you replace the mattress later.