Fire Door Safety Week: What About What's Hanging Next to the Door?
Fire Door Safety Week runs from 21st to 25th September this year, and if you work anywhere near a facilities or compliance role in healthcare, hospitality or education, you've probably already had it flagged. Fire doors get (and rightly so!) a lot of attention during the campaign - checked, tested, talked about in every safety briefing going. But here's a question we don't hear asked nearly as often: what's hanging on the wall right next to that door? A set of curtains? A blind? Or maybe BOTH!
A Fire Door Is Only Part of the Picture
A fire door does one job brilliantly - it holds a fire back long enough for people to get out and for help to get in. But most fire doors don't sit in isolation. They're surrounded by curtains, blinds, cushions and soft furnishings that can either support that same goal or work against it.
An untreated, standard fabric curtain hanging near a fire door can ignite and spread flame just as readily as anything else in the room - undoing a chunk of the fire safety planning that's gone into that space. It's rarely that anyone's cutting corners; it's simply that soft furnishings tend to fall outside the "fire door checklist" conversation altogether.
The Same Duty of Care, a Different Product
We've written in detail before about why we specialise in flame-retardant curtains and soft furnishings - worth a read if you haven't already (handy link below!), so we won't repeat the whole story here. The short version: every fabric we supply for healthcare, hospitality and education settings is manufactured to meet BS 5867 Part 2, and wherever we can, we use inherently flame-retardant fibres rather than a chemical treatment. The safety is woven in, not sprayed on, so it doesn't fade the way a treated finish can over years of washing.
That matters because a fire door only does its job properly if everything around it is pulling in the same direction.
A Timely Nudge, Not a Scare Story
We're not here to tell you your soft furnishings are a ticking time bomb - most of our clients already take this seriously, which is exactly why they're clients. Fire Door Safety Week is simply a useful, calendar-fixed moment to ask the question alongside the door checks: when did anyone last look at the fire rating of the curtains, blinds or cushions in this building?
If the honest answer is "I'm not sure," that's a perfectly normal place to start from - and a five-minute conversation with us is usually enough to tell you where you stand. We'll be happy to help and advise accordingly!
Fifty Years of Getting the Detail Right
We've been making bespoke curtains, blinds and soft furnishings for over 50 years, and every fire-rated fabric we use is manufactured and fitted by our own team, start to finish - nothing left to chance. If a fire door is worth checking this week, so is what's hanging next to it...
Want to learn more?
Got a building that could do with a second look?
We're always happy to talk it through!
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