Best Kids Bike Helmets

The most common failure with a child helmet is not the helmet. It is that the thing is sitting an inch too far back, the side straps are slack, and the buckle is loose enough to fit three fingers under. In that state the helmet lifts off the forehead the moment the head goes forward, which is the direction almost every bicycle crash sends a child. The foam never gets a chance to do its job.

That is fixable in a few minutes with a tape measure and a mirror, and it is worth more than any spec on the box. So the first half of this guide is sizing and fitting. The second half is which helmets are actually built for small heads, because a few design details genuinely differ from adult helmets: weight, the shape of the back, and how the buckle closes.

One query brings a lot of parents here that deserves a straight answer rather than a product recommendation, so it gets its own section further down: helmets for newborns and infants.

Size by head circumference, not by age

Helmet packaging loves an age range because it sells. Head growth does not follow it. Two five year olds can be four centimetres apart in circumference, which is more than a whole size band, and a large three year old will outgrow a helmet marketed to five year olds.

Take a soft tailor's tape, or a piece of string you then measure against a ruler, and run it around the widest part of the head: roughly one inch above the eyebrows at the front, above the ears at the sides, and around the bulge at the back of the skull. Pull it snug, not tight. Write down the centimetre figure. Every serious helmet brand publishes its size ranges in centimetres, and that number is the only one you need.

These are the bands you will typically see, with the head sizes that usually go with them. Treat them as orientation, not as a substitute for measuring.

• Toddler, roughly 46 to 50 cm. Usually about 12 months to 3 years. This is the smallest size sold and it is a genuinely different design job from an adult helmet.
• Child, roughly 50 to 54 cm. Usually about 3 to 7 years. The largest and most competitive part of the kids market.
• Youth, roughly 53 to 57 cm. Usually about 7 to 12 years. Overlaps heavily with adult small, and a lot of youth heads are better served by an adult XS or S shell with thicker pads removed.
• Teen, roughly 54 to 58 cm and up. Buy from the adult range. Our main bike helmet guide covers that side, and there is more on measuring and shell shape in helmet sizing, fit and safety ratings.

If your measurement lands between two sizes, take the smaller one if the retention dial still opens far enough to slide the helmet on, because a helmet you can tighten down is safer than one you are trying to pad out. Buying a size up "to grow into" is the single most common sizing mistake parents make, and it produces exactly the loose, rocking fit described at the top of this page.

The 2-4-1 check, adapted for a child who will not sit still

Bike shops teach this as 2-4-1, and it works because each number checks one failure mode.

Two fingers above the eyebrows

The front rim should sit roughly two of your child's finger widths above the eyebrow line, so the helmet covers the forehead. Almost every badly worn helmet fails here first, tipped back like a hat. If the helmet slides back when the child looks up, the rear cradle is too loose or the helmet is too big.

Straps forming a 4 around each ear

The front and rear straps should meet in a junction that sits just below and slightly forward of the earlobe, making a rough V or 4 shape with the ear inside it. Most side sliders are adjustable and most are set badly out of the box. Get them even on both sides, then check the ear is not folded under a strap, because a folded ear is the fastest route to a child refusing the helmet.

One finger under the chin strap

Buckle up, then slide one finger between the strap and the throat. One should fit; two means it is loose. Ask the child to open their mouth wide: they should feel the helmet pull down on the top of the head. If nothing happens, tighten.

With a wriggling toddler, do the whole sequence with them sitting on your lap facing away from you, which stops the head from turning and lets you work both sliders at once. Then rock the helmet. Hand flat on the crown, push it forward, back, and side to side. The eyebrows should move with the helmet. If the shell slides over the skin instead, keep tightening.

What a toddler helmet actually needs to do differently

Three design details separate a good small helmet from a shrunken adult one, and only one of them shows up in marketing.

Weight, because the neck is the limit

A toddler's head is a much larger fraction of their body mass than an adult's, and the neck muscles supporting it are correspondingly weaker. Adding 300 grams to that lever is not trivial. A heavy helmet makes a small child's head nod forward, encourages them to fight it off, and adds load in exactly the situation you are trying to protect against. Toddler helmets are usually built in a smaller shell with thinner foam for this reason, and the lightest ones are worth paying for. If you can only optimise one variable below fit, optimise weight.

A flat back, if the child rides in a seat or trailer

This one catches out almost every parent buying their first helmet. Round-backed helmets, including most skate-style ones, have a domed rear that pushes against the backrest of a rear child seat or the seatback of a trailer. The result is that the helmet tips forward over the child's eyes, or worse, the head gets forced into a chin-to-chest position for the whole ride while the child cannot tell you what is wrong. Helmets designed for this use have a deliberately flattened or scooped rear profile so the head can rest back normally. If you have a child seat or you tow, this feature is not optional. There is more on the seat side of that decision in our guide to ebike child seats, and on towing in ebike trailers and towing.

A buckle that cannot pinch

A standard side-release buckle can trap a fold of skin under the chin. It happens once, it genuinely hurts, and from then on the child associates the helmet with being hurt. Two solutions are common: a pinch-guard plastic tab behind the buckle, and a magnetic buckle that snaps closed with one hand and cannot catch skin. The magnetic type is faster with an impatient toddler and is one of the few premium features on a kids helmet that pays for itself in compliance.

Five kids helmets worth a look

These are chosen for what they do differently rather than for a ranking. Every one of them meets CPSC 1203, because everything legally sold for bicycle use in the US does. Prices move constantly, so treat the figures as bands.

The Tremor covers most of the child and youth range in a single shell with a proper dial cradle, which is what makes it forgiving as a head grows. It is a conventional round road-style helmet, so it is a poor choice if a rear child seat is involved, and a very good one for a kid riding their own bike.

The Scamp is the default first helmet for a reason: it is genuinely small rather than a child size pretending to be one, it is light, and the pinch guard removes the buckle problem. The rear is lower and less domed than a skate shell, which helps in a child seat, though a purpose-built flat-back design helps more.

Designed around the specific problem of a small passenger leaning back against something. The magnetic buckle is the other reason parents keep recommending it, because closing a helmet one-handed while holding a squirming toddler is a real constraint. Heavier than a Scamp, so it suits the trailer and seat use case more than a toddler pedalling their own balance bike.

The Sidetrack is the answer to the reasonable objection that a child will outgrow this in eighteen months. It is a mountain-bike-shaped shell with more rear coverage than a road helmet, it takes a MIPS liner, and it regularly sells for less than half the price of premium options. Nothing about it is exciting, which is fine.

Buy this only for the riding that justifies it: bike park laps, jump lines, or an electric dirt bike. Check the sticker inside before you buy, because some full face models are certified only to downhill standards and some carry CPSC 1203 as well; you want the bicycle certification if the helmet will be used on a bicycle. For anything with a petrol or high-power electric motor, you are into a different category entirely, covered in our dirt bike helmet guide.

How they compare

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Size ranges vary between production runs and between colourways, so check the current label against your measurement rather than trusting this table alone.

The newborn and infant question, answered honestly

A lot of people search for a newborn bike helmet, and the useful answer is not a product.

Paediatric guidance in the United States, including from the American Academy of Pediatrics, is generally that a child should not ride as a passenger on a bicycle, in a rear child seat, or in a trailer until around 12 months of age. The reasoning is anatomical rather than cautious. An infant's neck musculature cannot reliably support the head against road vibration and sudden stops, and adding the mass of a helmet makes that worse rather than better. Below about a year, most children also cannot sit unsupported for the length of a ride, which is a separate prerequisite.

That is why the smallest helmets on the market start at around 45 to 47 cm, which is roughly a 12 month head. Nobody makes a certified bicycle helmet smaller than that, and a manufacturer who did would be solving the wrong problem.

Riding with an under-one is not the only option that gets ruled out here. A trailer is sometimes described as safer because the child is lower and enclosed, but it does not fix neck support and it does not fix unsupported sitting, so the same age guidance applies. Once your child is genuinely ready, the setup decisions are covered in ebike child seats.

CPSC, MIPS, and what the labels really mean

Two things get conflated constantly, and they are not the same kind of thing at all.

CPSC 1203 is a mandatory federal standard and it is pass or fail. Every bicycle helmet legally sold in the United States, for a child or an adult, has to pass it. There is no bronze, silver and gold. A helmet that costs $30 and a helmet that costs $300 have both cleared the same impact attenuation requirement, the same strap strength test, and the same roll-off test. This is the single most useful fact in helmet shopping and it is the one marketing works hardest to obscure.

MIPS is a proprietary liner, not a certification. It is a low-friction layer between the head and the foam that allows a few millimetres of rotation in an angled impact, which is the impact type most bicycle crashes produce. It is a genuine engineering feature with plausible benefit, and it is now widely available in kids sizes, which was not true a few years ago. It is not a standard, a rating, or a legal requirement, and a helmet without it is not unsafe. Several brands now use their own rotational systems instead, which are not MIPS and are not therefore worse.

Virginia Tech's independent helmet ratings are the most useful public comparison data available, and they do include a growing number of youth models. Where a rating exists for a helmet you are considering, it tells you more than any brand claim. We go through how to read all of this in helmet sizing, fit and safety ratings.

One thing worth knowing if your child is riding anything motorised: bicycle helmet standards are written around bicycle impact speeds, and kinetic energy rises with the square of speed. A child on a pedal bike and a teenager on a fast ebike are not asking the same thing of the same helmet. That gap, and the European speed-pedelec standard that exists to close it, is covered in our ebike helmet guide, and the speeds each class is allowed to reach are in ebike classes explained.

Growth, crashes, and getting it worn at all

Children outgrow helmets faster than helmets wear out. Recheck the measurement every six months up to about age eight, and every time the retention dial stops having spare adjustment in either direction. When the dial is at its loosest setting and the helmet still feels tight, or at its tightest and the helmet still rocks, that helmet is finished regardless of how new it looks.

Replace after any impact where the helmet hit something, whether or not you can see damage. Expanded polystyrene protects by crushing, and crushed foam does not recover. The dent may be invisible under the shell and the helmet will still look perfect. Replace it anyway. Most manufacturers also publish a replacement interval, commonly around five years from first use, driven by UV exposure and strap degradation rather than by the foam itself.

Then there is the part no engineering solves. A helmet only works when it is on the head, and compliance is largely won or lost in the first month.

• Let the child pick the colour or graphic. Ownership beats argument, and this is the cheapest safety intervention available to you.
• Wear one yourself, every time. Children copy behaviour far faster than they absorb rules, and this is the strongest single predictor of whether a helmet gets worn.
• Fix the pain points immediately. Pinched skin, a folded ear, a strap sawing at the neck, or a helmet that is too hot are all solvable in two minutes, and all of them turn into a refusal if left alone.
• Make it non-negotiable rather than a discussion. The helmet goes on before the bike leaves the garage, in the same way a seatbelt goes on before the car moves.

Whether a helmet is legally required depends on your state and on the child's age, and roughly half of US states have a youth helmet law of some kind. Our guide to helmet laws by state has the detail, though the honest position is that this is a question you should be answering on the merits rather than on the statute.

If you are still choosing the bike rather than the helmet, start with electric bikes for kids or, for an older child, electric bikes for teens. And if the helmet is for a parent riding alongside, the adult side of this decision is in women's bike helmets and the main bike helmet guide.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

• How the MIPS safety system worksMIPS
• Bicycle helmet ratingsVirginia Tech Helmet Lab
• 16 CFR Part 1203: Safety standard for bicycle helmetsElectronic Code of Federal Regulations
• Bicycle helmet standards explainedBicycle Helmet Safety Institute