Once you have chosen a pram or pushchair, it can suddenly feel as though you have only bought half of it. Rain covers, footmuffs, organisers, parasols, buggy boards, cup holders and matching bags all appear on lists of things parents supposedly “need”.
The reality is much simpler. A few pram accessories can make everyday life noticeably easier, but plenty are useful only for particular families, seasons or situations. You don’t need to buy everything before your baby arrives, and waiting until you discover an actual problem is often the easiest way to avoid wasting money.
Quick summary
If you mainly want to know what is worth buying, the answer depends more on how you will use your pushchair than on somebody else’s list of essentials. As a starting point:
- A rain cover is one of the more useful accessories for many UK families, particularly if you regularly walk rather than drive.
- Safe sun protection is important, but that does not mean you need every summer accessory available.
- A footmuff can be brilliant for regular cold-weather walks but much less important for a mainly car-based family.
- Organisers, cup holders, buggy boards and car-seat adaptors can be genuinely useful when they solve a specific problem.
- Check what came with your pushchair before buying anything else. You may already have the rain cover, storage or other accessories you need.
- If you’re unsure about an accessory, waiting is a perfectly sensible option. You can buy it later if you discover that you actually need it.
This article is for / not for
This article is for you if:
- You have bought, or are choosing, a pram or pushchair and aren’t sure which extras are worthwhile.
- You want to avoid spending money on accessories you may barely use.
- You want practical guidance rather than another “10 must-have accessories” shopping list.
- You’re trying to work out whether branded accessories are worth paying extra for.
This article isn’t intended to:
- Recommend specific models or brands of pram accessories.
- Replace the instructions or safety guidance supplied with your pushchair.
- Help you choose the pushchair itself. For that, see How to choose and buy the right pushchair.
Start with your life, not the accessory list
The easiest mistake to make with pram accessories is to shop for every situation you can imagine.
You might picture long winter walks, summer holidays, muddy country paths, shopping trips, days on public transport and afternoons when an older sibling suddenly refuses to walk another step. There is probably an accessory for every one of them.
That doesn’t mean you need all of them.
A parent walking several miles every day through a British winter may get enormous value from a good footmuff and rain cover. If your pushchair spends much of its life folded in the car boot and is mainly used around shops, those purchases may be far less important.
Likewise, a buggy board can feel indispensable if you’re juggling a baby and a tired three-year-old. With one child, it is just another thing taking up space in the garage.
Before buying anything, start with a much simpler question:
What problem am I expecting this accessory to solve?
If you can’t think of one yet, there is a good chance the purchase can wait.
If you’re still planning the whole travel setup rather than just the extras, our Baby travel essentials: prams, car seats and getting out safely guide is the broader place to start.
Pram accessories that are worth considering first
There isn’t one accessory that every family needs, but there are a few that are likely to prove useful for a much wider range of parents.
A rain cover
In the UK, a rain cover is one of the easier accessories to justify if you expect to walk regularly.
You may not need it every day, but when you’re halfway home and the rain starts properly, it becomes considerably more useful than it looked sitting unused underneath the pushchair.
Before buying one separately, check whether your pushchair already came with one. Many do, and it is easy to accidentally buy an extra accessory before you’ve worked through everything included in the box.
If you need to buy one, compatibility matters more than having a particular logo on it. It should fit the pushchair correctly and be used according to the manufacturer’s instructions.
For a family that mainly moves between home, car and indoor destinations, you may decide that a rain cover is less urgent. That’s the point of this article: useful doesn’t automatically mean essential for you.
Proper sun protection
Shade for your baby is more than just another convenient accessory, so this is one area where it is worth thinking about what your pushchair provides.
The Lullaby Trust advises parents not to cover prams, buggies or travel systems with blankets or cloths that prevent air circulating. Instead, it recommends a clip-on sunshade or parasol that provides shade while allowing airflow and letting you see your baby.
That doesn’t necessarily mean buying an expensive matching parasol from the pushchair manufacturer. It does mean making sure whatever you use is suitable for the pushchair and provides shade without enclosing your baby underneath fabric.
We’ve looked at this issue separately in Pram parasol: Help avoid the hidden danger to your baby.
Somewhere sensible to put the things you carry
Parents tend to accumulate things when leaving the house with a baby. Nappies, wipes, spare clothes, bottles, muslins and snacks all have to go somewhere.
Before buying an organiser, changing bag clips or extra storage, however, look at the basket underneath your pushchair.
If it comfortably carries the things you normally take out, you may already have your solution.
This is also a safety consideration rather than simply a question of convenience. RoSPA warns that overloading a pushchair can cause it to tip and specifically advises against using pushchair handles to carry shopping bags because they can make the pushchair unstable.
An organiser may be useful for a phone, keys and a few small things you want within easy reach. It shouldn’t become a way of hanging half the contents of your changing bag from the handlebars.
Accessories that are brilliant for the right family
This is where “must-have” lists become particularly unhelpful. Some of the best pram accessories are incredibly useful for one parent and almost pointless for another.
A footmuff
A footmuff can be excellent if you walk a lot in colder weather.
It stays attached to the pushchair, can be easier than repeatedly arranging blankets around a wriggling child and means you have one less loose item to remember every time you leave home.
But whether it earns its place depends heavily on when your baby is born and how you travel.
If most journeys involve putting your baby into the car, driving somewhere and using the pushchair briefly indoors, you might hardly use one. A family doing nursery runs on foot through January may feel very differently.
You also don’t necessarily need to buy it before your baby arrives. If autumn turns into winter and you start thinking, “I wish we had something warmer for the pushchair”, that’s a pretty good indication that you have found a real need.
A pushchair organiser
Pushchair organisers appeal because they put the things you use constantly within reach.
Keys, tissues, your phone and other small items can be much easier to grab from an organiser than from the bottom of a large changing bag.
The danger is buying an organiser because pushchairs in photographs seem to have one attached.
Try using the pushchair first. If you repeatedly find yourself digging around for the same things, an organiser might solve an irritation you genuinely have. If everything fits happily into the basket or changing bag, it may simply duplicate storage you already have.
A cup holder
Few accessories divide into “completely unnecessary” and “why didn’t I buy this sooner?” quite as neatly as a cup holder.
If you regularly walk with a reusable water bottle or buy a takeaway coffee, having somewhere secure to put it can be genuinely convenient. If you rarely carry a drink, you won’t suddenly start needing one because your pushchair has a cup holder.
Again, check compatibility and positioning before fitting one. You don’t want an accessory interfering with folding the pushchair or getting knocked every time you go through a doorway.
A buggy board
A buggy board is a perfect example of an accessory that makes little sense until your family circumstances make it useful.
If you have an older child who can walk most of the time but still gets tired on longer journeys, being able to hop onto a board can make outings considerably easier.
With no older child, there is obviously no reason to buy one.
RoSPA advises that buggy boards should be suitable for the particular buggy and fitted correctly, so this isn’t an accessory to choose purely because a universal-looking one happens to be cheaper.
Car-seat adaptors
Car-seat adaptors can be useful if your travel system is designed to let you attach a compatible infant car seat to the pushchair chassis.
The important word there is compatible.
Don’t assume an adaptor works because the car seat appears to fit. Check the approved combinations from the pushchair and car-seat manufacturers.
And if you’re still choosing the car seat itself, start with Baby car seat guide – choosing the right one for you rather than choosing your car seat around a convenient pushchair accessory.
An insect net
For most everyday UK outings, an insect net may spend far more time stored away than attached to the pushchair.
That doesn’t make it pointless. If you’re travelling somewhere where mosquitoes or other biting insects are a problem, or regularly spend summer evenings outside, it can suddenly become very useful.
This is another good example of something you can buy when the situation exists, rather than several months in advance because it appeared on a newborn checklist.
A pushchair travel bag
If you’re flying with the pushchair, a protective travel bag may be worth considering, particularly for an expensive model that you’re worried about getting damaged in transit.
If you have no plans to fly with it, there is little reason to own one.
It sounds obvious when written down, but this is exactly how accessory spending creeps up. We buy things for possibilities rather than problems that actually exist.
What can you probably skip?
I’d be wary of declaring whole categories of pram accessories useless because another family may use something every day that you barely touch.
There are, however, some purchases worth slowing down over.
The complete matching accessory range
It can be very tempting after choosing a pushchair to add the matching changing bag, footmuff, cup holder, organiser, parasol and every other accessory carrying the same brand name.
They will usually look good together, and branded accessories should be designed with that pushchair in mind. That doesn’t mean you need the complete set.
Choose each item separately based on whether you expect to use it.
If you particularly like the matching changing bag and will use it every day, that’s a perfectly valid reason to buy it. The important distinction is between wanting something and being told that it is an essential part of using your pushchair.
More storage before you’ve tested the storage you have
An organiser, changing bag, basket clips and extra storage bag can all sound useful individually.
Bought together, you may discover you have created an elaborate storage system for things that fitted perfectly well into the pushchair basket.
Use the pushchair for a while first. If there is a repeated annoyance, solve that annoyance.
A pram liner just because it looks nice
Pram liners can help protect the pushchair seat from spills and general mess, and some parents find them very useful once babies become messy snack-eating toddlers.
But they’re a good example of an accessory that doesn’t necessarily need to be bought on day one.
If the pushchair fabric is easy to remove and wash, you may decide you don’t need one at all. If you later find yourself repeatedly cleaning yoghurt, crumbs and mysterious sticky substances out of the seat, your opinion may change.
Anything you’re buying “just in case”
This may be the biggest category of unnecessary pram accessories.
If something is inexpensive, easy to obtain and not needed immediately, there is usually little downside to waiting.
Babies are remarkably good at changing the plans we made before they arrived. Your daily routine may look nothing like the one you imagined while shopping during pregnancy.
You don’t lose anything by letting real life tell you which conveniences are worth paying for.
Branded or universal pram accessories?
Universal accessories can be considerably cheaper than buying everything from the pushchair manufacturer, but “universal” shouldn’t be interpreted as “guaranteed to work perfectly with absolutely everything”.
For simple accessories, a compatible universal option may do exactly what you need without paying extra for the matching brand.
For anything that attaches to the frame, affects how the pushchair operates or carries additional weight, it makes sense to be more cautious. Check the pushchair instructions and the accessory manufacturer’s compatibility information.
RoSPA also advises avoiding non-approved accessories that could damage a pushchair and recommends reading the manufacturer’s instructions before using it.
So the choice isn’t simply:
Branded = good, universal = bad.
It is:
Does this accessory fit properly, is it suitable for this pushchair, and does the manufacturer allow it to be used this way?
If the answer isn’t clear, saving £20 probably isn’t worth guessing.
Six questions to ask before buying anything else
Rather than trying to memorise another list of essentials, use the same quick test whenever an accessory catches your eye.
Ask yourself:
- What problem does this solve for me?
- Does my pushchair already do this without another accessory?
- How often am I realistically going to use it?
- Is it suitable and compatible with my pushchair?
- Could something I already own do the same job safely?
- Could I wait and buy it later if I discover I need it?
That final question is particularly useful.
A rain cover bought after getting soaked on the school run is unlikely to become cupboard clutter. A £50 accessory bought six months before your baby arrives because somebody called it a “must-have” has a much greater chance.
Buying later isn’t poor preparation. Sometimes it is simply better information.
More help choosing your baby travel setup
If you’re still working out what you need for getting around with your baby, these guides tackle the bigger decisions separately:
- How to choose and buy the right pushchair – what to think about when choosing the pushchair itself, including your transport, lifestyle and how long you expect to use it.
- Pram parasol: Help avoid the hidden danger to your baby – more detail on keeping your baby shaded without restricting airflow around the pram.
- Baby car seat guide – choosing the right one for you – help with the much more important decision of choosing a suitable car seat rather than simply choosing its accessories.
Useful UK safety guidance
For product safety and hot-weather advice, these UK organisations provide useful guidance beyond individual retailer recommendations:
RoSPA: Pushchairs and buggies safety guidance
The Lullaby Trust: Hot weather advice for babies
RoSPA’s guidance is particularly useful for pushchair stability, bags, buggy boards and accessories, while The Lullaby Trust explains how to provide shade safely in warmer weather.
What matters most
The best pram accessory isn’t necessarily the one with the best reviews or the one that matches your pushchair perfectly.
It’s the one that repeatedly makes your particular life easier.
For many parents, that might mean a rain cover, sensible sun protection and little else at first. Someone walking everywhere with two young children may eventually add a footmuff, organiser and buggy board and use all three constantly.
Neither setup is more complete than the other.
Start with what you know you’ll use, check what your pushchair already includes and give yourself permission to buy the rest later.
There will still be rain covers, cup holders and footmuffs available next month.
FAQ
What pram accessories do I really need?
There isn’t a universal list. A rain cover and appropriate sun protection are useful starting points for many UK families, but everything else depends heavily on your routine, season, transport and what came with your pushchair.
The most useful rule is to buy an accessory when you can identify the problem it will solve.
Do I need a rain cover for my pram in the UK?
If you regularly walk with your baby, a rain cover is likely to be useful given the UK climate.
Check whether your pushchair already includes one before buying it separately, and use a cover designed or confirmed as suitable for your pushchair.
Are universal pram accessories worth buying?
They can be. A universal accessory may offer the same useful function for considerably less than a branded version.
Check compatibility rather than relying on the word “universal”, particularly for accessories that attach to the frame, affect stability or carry additional weight.
Do I need a footmuff?
Not necessarily.
If you do a lot of walking during colder months, a footmuff can be extremely convenient. If most of your journeys are by car and the pushchair is used mainly indoors or for short periods, you may find it much less important.
Can I hang my changing bag on the pushchair handles?
Be cautious about adding weight to pushchair handles. RoSPA advises that handles should not be used for carrying shopping bags because the extra weight can cause instability, and it warns against overloading pushchairs generally. Check your pushchair manufacturer’s instructions for its approved storage and accessories.