Advice For Improving The Fire Safety Of Your Home

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While a safe home isn’t necessarily a beautiful home, being safe is much more important than arguably any other design priority. Thankfully, this doesn’t have to be a binary, and knowing your family is safe, protected and well-served by the household is arguably a vital priority in itself.


As such, improving the fire safety of your household, espeically if it has multiple floors, long corridors and converted spaces, is important. There are some main targets to hit here. First, you want to limit the chance of a fire breaking out entirely. Second, you want to ensure a fire can’t travel well if it does break out, and third, you need to ensure you can evacuate in confidence if a fire becomes uncontrollable.


Let’s explore some suggestions for achieving that, below:

Consider Access & Exit Routes

It’s a little surprising how many houses don’t have a clear fire exit plan, especially ones with basements or attic conversions where exits aren’t so obvious. In a real emergency, people don’t tend to make the most rational choices after all, they just want out, and fast. That’s why having clear access routes is so important, and also doing small fire drills with your family ever so often.
But design matters most. If you’ve got basement rooms, for instance, it’s not enough to just have a small window down there, it needs to be something someone can actually climb out of. In this case, window well covers come in handy, because they protect the exit from getting blocked by debris, ice, or heavier snow, and also help keep it functional as a way out.

Use Self-Closing Fire Doors Where Appropriate

It’s unlikely you want your home to feel a hospital ward, so adding industrial adding big bulky doors probably isn’t your dream aesthetic. But self-closing doors don’t have to be ugly if implemented right, as there are plenty of styles now that look just like standard doors. The point isn’t to seal everything off like a vault either, it’s just to slow things down such as if you’re leaving the house for a weekend. A fire that’s kept in one room is easier to deal with than one that spreads through the whole house in under five minutes. So even if you only use them between high-risk areas like the kitchen and hallway, or the garage and living space, it’s a smart idea.

Think Through Materials & Belongings

If you ever get the chance, do a slow walk through your house like you’ve never seen it before and ask what is flammable and how fire might spead. A pile of coats behind the door might help to accelerate a fire for instance, and that’s not great if you need to open that door in a hurry. The extension lead with six things plugged into it next to the curtains is probably a bad idea too. In general, fire safety often comes down to these little things that we might not think twice about usually. You don’t need to throw everything out or live like a minimalist, but it helps to rethink how flammable your space really is and make slight adjustments if you can.
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With this advice, we hope you can improve the safety of your home in the best way.

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