Fire safety and fire resistance: French building regulation 2026

The two notions are often confused. They measure radically different things and engage different parties in the construction chain.

Reaction to fire characterises how a material behaves when subjected to a source of heat or flame: whether it ignites, how it contributes to the fire, what smoke it produces.

Since European harmonisation, the former French classification has been replaced by the Euroclasses A1, A2, B, C, D, E and F. Those classes carry additional indices for smoke production (s1, s2, s3) and for flaming droplets (d0, d1, d2).

Resistance to fire measures how long a construction element — floor, column, wall, door — continues to perform its function during a standard fire. It is expressed in minutes.

Here too the former French designations for stability, fire separation and flame barrier have been replaced by the normalised European ones:

Resistance to fire is verified by the technical control office for buildings open to the public in the first four categories, for high-rise buildings, and for buildings under special rules. It covers the structural elements — floors, columns, load-bearing walls, stairwells — and the separations between rooms: fire-resisting partitions and fire doors.

Residential buildings are classified in families by height and configuration. That classification determines the fire resistance required of each component.

Family 1 and 2 cover individual houses; family 2 also covers small blocks; family 3 covers blocks up to seven storeys, subdivided by access conditions; family 4 covers taller blocks up to the high-rise threshold.

Fire safety in buildings open to the public is governed by the safety regulation of 25 June 1980, much amended. That text is fundamental for any architect working on such buildings. It is structured in four books: provisions common to all, provisions for the first four categories, provisions for the fifth, and special establishments.

Hotels, medicalised residences and healthcare establishments with accommodation accumulate reinforced requirements on partitions, on finishes and on detection. In rooms open to the public and in the escape routes of buildings in the first four categories, finishes must meet the Euroclass requirements for walls, floors and ceilings, and those requirements tighten at sleeping levels.

Establishments subject to the labour code — offices, workshops, warehouses, factories — fall under a regime distinct from buildings open to the public. The technical reference is the order of 5 August 1992 as amended, on fire prevention and smoke control in certain workplaces, supplemented by the labour code itself.

For buildings at or below 8 m, the absence of a regulatory requirement on the structure does not mean no precaution is needed: the insurer, the process and the value of the contents often justify going beyond the minimum.

The labour code sets precise obligations on the number and width of escape routes according to the total occupancy, staff and public together. Width is expressed in units of passage: one unit is 0.60 m, in practice 0.90 m for small widths and multiples of 0.60 m beyond.

Smoke control extracts smoke and combustion gases so that escape routes stay usable and the fire service can intervene. Its sizing and design fall to a specialist engineer, coordinated by the fire safety systems coordinator.

In workplaces, smoke control is mandatory for windowless rooms, for basement rooms above a threshold area, and for large-volume rooms. In buildings open to the public the obligations are set by the safety regulation according to type and category, and are generally stricter than in workplaces for establishments of large capacity.

Natural smoke control relies on roof vents and low-level air inlets. The total area of the smoke outlets must exceed one hundredth of the floor area served, with a minimum of 1 m²; the same requirement applies to the air inlets.

Mechanical smoke control is required where natural extraction is not possible — windowless rooms, deep plans. The extraction rate is calculated on the basis of one cubic metre per second per 100 m² of floor area. Extract grilles are connected by ductwork to smoke extraction fans, complemented by natural or mechanical air inlets sweeping the volume.

Above certain heights, buildings enter the high-rise regime, which has its own regulation distinct from that for buildings open to the public and for dwellings.

Above 200 metres a very-high-rise regime applies, with further requirements on structure, evacuation and redundancy. Every high-rise project must be reviewed by the central safety commission before the planning application is determined.

A fire safety system brings together the detection equipment, the control equipment and the actuators — dampers, powered doors, smoke vents — and the alarm. Systems are classified from A, the most complete, to E.

A category A or B system requires a fire safety systems coordinator, whose role is to ensure coherence between the detection, the control equipment and every actuator, from design through to the commissioning tests. That mission is a distinct appointment, generating fees of 5,000 to 20,000 € according to the size of the project, and it must be included in the budget from the outline stage.

The commissioning tests are the point at which incoherence surfaces. They must be planned well before the completion visit of the safety commission: a system not fully tested means a deferred opinion and, in practice, an opening postponed by several weeks.