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CPSC's advice is short and concrete. Install window guards to prevent children from falling out of windows. For windows on the sixth floor and below, install window guards that adults and older children can open easily in case of fire. Install window stops so that windows open no more than four inches. Never depend on screens to keep children from falling out of windows. Whenever possible, open windows from the top instead of the bottom. Keep furniture away from windows to discourage children from climbing near windows.

Each of those lines is doing specific work. The four-inch stop exists because an opening a child cannot get through is the simplest possible protection and costs almost nothing. The guidance about guards being openable by adults and older children on the sixth floor and below exists because a guard that nobody can release turns a fire into a trap. Opening from the top of a double-hung window gives ventilation without an opening at floor level. And keeping furniture away from windows removes the step that turns a high sill into a reachable one, which is the single most common story behind these falls.

None of this argues against screens. It argues for understanding what the screen is: a barrier against insects and debris that also, unhelpfully, looks like a barrier against people. Once installed, a screen makes an open window look closed from the inside, which is exactly the illusion that guards and stops are there to correct.

In most of the country window guards are a choice. In New York City they are an obligation with detail attached. The city's health department states that you must have window guards if you live in a building with at least three apartments and a child 10 or younger resides in your apartment, and that the building's owner or superintendent must install them in your apartment if the building has more than three apartments, or if you request them. Guards should be in every window in the apartment and in common areas, except for windows leading to fire escapes, and that reaches windows leading to a terrace or balcony, bathroom windows and first-floor apartment windows.

The exceptions are designed around escape rather than around convenience. In buildings with fire escapes, the window guard must be left off one window in each ground-floor apartment so that the window can be used as an emergency exit. And the rule closes the loophole most often attempted in summer: the law does not allow tenants to remove window guards to install air conditioners, and a tenant can ask the building owner to install the air conditioner and the window guards together.

If you live anywhere else, the lesson is not that the New York rule applies to you. It is that the trade-off it encodes, protection at every window except the ones needed to get out, is the right way to think about your own house. Ask your own jurisdiction whether it has a rule, and design around escape either way.

Any hardware added to a window has to survive one test: the room still has to be escapable. Publishing the 2020 Minnesota Residential Code, which adopts the 2018 International Residential Code with amendments, the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry states that basements, habitable attics and every sleeping room shall have not less than one operable emergency escape and rescue opening, and that where basements contain sleeping rooms an opening is required in each of them. The operational rule is the one that bears on screens and guards: emergency escape and rescue openings shall be operational from the inside of the room without the use of keys, tools or special knowledge.

The code also names the device category that reconciles fall protection with escape. It provides that window opening control devices on windows serving as a required emergency escape and rescue opening shall comply with ASTM F2090. Those are devices that limit how far a window opens but can be released deliberately by someone who needs to get out, which is precisely the balance a bedroom needs when a small child sleeps in it.

The dimensions are worth knowing because they are what any added hardware must not compromise: a net clear opening of not less than 5.7 square feet, obtained by normal operation of the opening from the inside, with a net clear height of not less than 24 inches and a net clear width of not less than 20 inches, and for a window, a sill height of not more than 44 inches above the floor. Minnesota also publishes a replacement-window allowance: replacement windows are exempt from the maximum sill height and the minimum opening requirements provided the unit is the manufacturer's largest standard size that fits the existing frame or rough opening, is the same operating style or one giving an equal or greater opening, and is not part of a change of occupancy. Confirm what your own jurisdiction enforces before you fit anything.

Screens are quoted per opening, and the differences between bids come down to what is being reused. The variables are the number and size of the openings, whether existing frames are being rescreened or new frames fabricated, the mesh specified, the hardware being replaced, whether any screen doors are included with their closers and hinges, whether the screens are removed and taken to a shop or made on site, and how the openings are accessed on upper floors. If window guards, stops or opening control devices are part of the same visit, ask for them as separate lines, because they are a different product with a different purpose.

LokalMatch is the introduction step. You describe the work once, with the number of openings, whether the frames are reusable, the mesh you want and whether a screen door is involved, and screen and window companies serving your area contact you directly. Those companies pay LokalMatch for the requests they receive, and the service is free to homeowners. LokalMatch does not make or fit screens, does not set prices, and does not vet, rank or recommend anyone, so making sure any fall-protection hardware is compatible with the escape requirements in your bedrooms remains yours to check.