Buying guide
Do I need fire doors? The rules for lofts, garages, flats and HMOs
For most rooms in most houses, a fire door is a choice. In a handful of specific situations it is a legal requirement — and those situations are exactly the ones where people find out late, after the doors have been ordered.
The situations where fire doors are required
Building regulations in England and Wales (Approved Document B) require fire doors when a building's layout means a fire could cut off the escape route. In an ordinary two-storey house that risk is considered manageable, which is why ordinary houses are not required to have them. These are the common triggers:
- A loft conversion — converting the loft of a two-storey house makes it three storeys, and the staircase becomes a protected escape route. Doors opening onto it from habitable rooms normally need to be fire doors
- Any house of three storeys or more, new-built or converted — same principle, protected stairway
- A door between an integral garage and the house — this one needs a fire door with a self-closing device, in every house, regardless of storeys
- Flat entrance doors opening onto a shared corridor or stairwell — these need certified self-closing fire doorsets with smoke seals, and are a specialist supply governed by stricter rules since Grenfell. We do not fit these — speak to your building's responsible person or a certified doorset installer
- Houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) — licensing conditions almost always require fire doors on the escape route, and HMO landlords are the group most likely to actually be inspected on it
What FD30 actually means
FD30 is the rating you will need in a house: the door resists fire for a minimum of 30 minutes in a standard test. In practice an FD30 door is 44mm thick rather than the standard 35mm — noticeably heavier in the hand — with a core built for it. Around the edge sits an intumescent strip, which stays inert until heat makes it expand and seal the gap between door and frame. A rating of FD30S adds smoke seals, for doors where cold smoke is the risk.
The part most people miss is that the rating belongs to the whole assembly, not the slab. An FD30 door hung on light hinges in an unsuitable frame is not an FD30 door any more. It needs fire-rated hinges — three of them, steel — a frame in suitable condition, the intumescent strip fitted, and the specified gaps around the edges. This is why fitting matters as much as the door, and why a correctly fitted fire door costs more to hang than a standard one.
What nobody is required to do — and what is still sensible
If you live in an ordinary two-storey house with no integral garage, no regulation compels you to fit fire doors anywhere. Some people fit one to the kitchen anyway — statistically the room where house fires start — and that is a reasonable choice rather than a requirement. What we would not do is pay for fire doors throughout a house that does not need them; a standard door with the same face design usually exists and costs less.
One caution for period-home owners: an original Victorian panel door cannot be upgraded to FD30 by adding strips to it, whatever an online listing may imply. Where regulations apply, the door itself has to be a certified fire door. There are FD30 doors made in traditional four-panel and period styles precisely for this situation.
The honest bit
We are door fitters, not building control. This page tells you when the question arises; the person who confirms the answer for your specific project is your building control officer, or the architect handling your conversion — and for a landlord, the licensing team at your council. Ask before the doors are ordered, not after. If the answer comes back "yes, fire doors", we supply FD30 doors in oak and primed finishes and fit them to the standard the rating requires — complete with the hinges, strips and closers that make the rating real.
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