I absolutely hated the idea of having stair gates around my house and resisted buying them for as long as possible. So when I could take no more and had been driven completely insane by chasing my little one around the house all day I finally gave in. I'm very house proud and didn't fancy having huge white chunky gates everywhere. After extensive research we found the Lindam extending wooden safety gate. Firstly I love that this gate is wooden and blends in with the wooden furniture around my house. Secondly this gate opens in both directions and doesn't have a bar across the bottom. I can't imagine carrying a toddler and having to step over a bar and then down a case of stairs every morning - so dangerous. Plus this gate can fit a wide variety of opening sizes. We have a narrow entrance to our kitchen and a wide opening to our stairs, but we were able to buy the same gate for each opening (I like things to match and be consistent - didn't want two different types of gate in the house). The fact that this gate opens completely wide is great, as on a lot of gates you can only open the middle section which you have to squeeze through. We originally saw this gate in my toddler's nursery and then realised if the professionals used this gate then it must be good. I would definitely recommend.