petal wrote:We never had stair gates, I can't remember any age when we started trusting them.
What we did however was to make rules for how they were allowed to approach the stairs.
So when quite small only crawling backwards. Then when a bit bigger bitter only by holding on and one step at the time.
Basically watching the kids abilities and taking it from there.
We never had a single accident.
It kind of depends of your situation and kids.
I think at nearly two you might be OK, I would definitely try without. If you change your mind you can always get some anyway.
Second what Petal said on teaching them from young to crawl down backwards when coming down the stairs. Although at 20 months old, may be a bit late for your daughter but you can gauge how gung-ho she is? Was something our nanny taught us with our first and we continued the same approach with our second. We moved from a bungalow to a terraced house when my oldest was one and bought 3 stairs gates initially but thankfully my nanny told us about this trick. Never ended up using any stair gates