Toppling furniture: what your product page has to say

Mandatory since 4 May 2025. In the ACCC's November 2025 sweep, 90% of businesses failed on at least one product.

Summarised from the ACCC's published guidance and the standard itself

The short answer

If you sell bookcases, chests of drawers, wardrobes, entertainment units, hall tables, display cabinets, buffets or sideboards in Australia, the warning has to appear in three places: on the furniture itself, in the instructions, and at the point of sale. Point of sale includes your website, and the ACCC's supplier guide is specific that online means in the product description, not only in the photo gallery.

This has been mandatory since 4 May 2025. It is the Consumer Goods (Toppling Furniture) Information Standard 2024.

90%

of businesses in the ACCC's November 2025 national sweep were non-compliant on at least one product. It examined more than 3,000 products at over 160 businesses. About 52% were non-compliant on everything checked. Only 10% passed.

Which products are covered

Category	What it covers	Height
1	Clothing storage units and bookcases. Chests of drawers, tallboys, wardrobes, dressers, shelving units, and the change tables and drawer units sold for nurseries.	686 mm or taller
2	Entertainment units. Anything designed mainly to house, support or carry a television.	Any height
3	Hall tables, display cabinets, buffets and sideboards.	686 mm or taller

686 mm is 27 inches, which is where the number comes from. Category 2 has no height rule at all, so a low TV unit is covered where a low bookcase is not. That catches people out.

What the warning has to contain

Four elements, and all four are required:

An alert word in capitals. DANGER or WARNING.
A statement to the effect that children have died from furniture toppling over.
The safety instructions. For a clothing storage unit or bookcase: "ALWAYS secure this furniture with an anchor device" and "NEVER allow children to stand, climb or hang on drawers, doors, or shelves. NEVER open more than one drawer at a time. Place heavy items down low." For an entertainment unit the first line becomes "ALWAYS secure your TV with an anchor device".
A safety alert symbol and a pictogram of a child climbing on toppling furniture, struck through.

The three mistakes we see most

1. The warning is in the manual but not the listing

This is the most common one by a distance, and it is the easiest to fix. The manufacturer supplied a compliant label and a compliant instruction sheet, and nobody added anything to the web page. All three placements are required separately.

2. The warning is inside an image

A JPEG of the warning label in the photo carousel is not the same as text in the description. The ACCC guide asks for the warning to be clearly visible, prominent and legible in the product description itself.

3. Only some of the range has it

A retailer adds the wording to the bestsellers, then adds forty more products over the following year and nobody re-checks. Of the businesses the ACCC swept, the 38 percentage points between "non-compliant on at least one product" and "non-compliant on everything" are almost all this. Partial coverage is the normal failure, not deliberate omission.

How to check your own store in ten minutes

Open your product feed at yourstore.com.au/products.json and search it for the word anchor. That file is the same data your product pages are built from, and it is public on every Shopify store. If the word does not appear, the warning is not in your descriptions.

Then check a handful of listings by eye for the pictogram, which no text search can see.

What this page is not

This is a plain-English summary of a published standard, not legal advice, and it does not tell you whether any particular listing complies. Whether a warning is sufficiently prominent and legible is a judgement about a specific page. If you want certainty, the standard itself is F2024L00512 and the ACCC's supplier guide is the practical companion to it.

Common questions

Does the toppling furniture standard apply to online listings?

Yes. The standard requires the warning at the point of sale both in store and online, and the ACCC's supplier guide states it belongs in the product description itself rather than only in the photographs.

What height of furniture is covered?

Clothing storage units, bookcases, hall tables, display cabinets, buffets and sideboards are covered at 686 mm or taller. Entertainment units are covered at any height.

What exactly does the warning have to say?

An alert word in capitals, a statement that children have died from furniture toppling over, the instruction to always secure the furniture with an anchor device, the instruction never to let children stand, climb or hang on drawers, doors or shelves, plus a safety alert symbol and a pictogram of a child climbing, struck through.

When did it become mandatory?

4 May 2025. The standard was made on 3 May 2024 with a twelve month transition period.

Is the ACCC actually enforcing it?

In November 2025 the ACCC published a national sweep of more than 3,000 products at over 160 businesses and found 90% non-compliant on at least one product. It said it would continue to monitor and would consider enforcement action. Product safety is on its 2026 compliance and enforcement priority list.

How long can a 'was' price stay up? · Can you say 'sitewide sale' in Australia? · Are countdown timers illegal in Australia? · ACCC Black Friday pricing rules · The eight-point pricing checklist

Sources

Every figure on this page traces to one of these. If any of it is wrong, tell us and we will correct it.
ACCC — price displays guidance · ACCC — pricing for business · ACCC — sitewide claim penalties, June 2025 · ACCC — Black Friday sweep findings, April 2026 · ACCC — strikethrough pricing penalties, June 2026 · ACCC — 2026-27 enforcement priorities

Check your own store, free Reads your public product feed. No login, nothing installed, nothing changed on your store. You get the list of products either way.