Fire Door Regulations: FD30 vs FD60 and the Certification You Need

Fire doors have never been under more scrutiny. Since Grenfell, the Fire Safety Act and the Building Safety Act have sharpened the focus on getting them specified, certified and installed correctly — and the paperwork matters as much as the door. Here's a plain-English guide to what the FD ratings mean, where each is required, and the evidence you need to fit them with confidence.

What the FD rating actually means

The number is minutes of fire resistance under test. FD30 = 30 minutes, FD60 = 60 minutes, and the range continues to FD90 and FD120 for the highest-risk applications. Doors are tested to BS 476-22 or the European standard BS EN 1634-1.

There are two properties being measured:

• Integrity (E) — the door holds back flames and hot gases for the rated time.
• Insulation (I) — the door also limits heat transfer to the unexposed face. A door rated EI30 does both for 30 minutes; E30 covers integrity only.

You'll also see an "S" suffix (e.g. FD30S). That means the door includes cold-smoke seals to restrict the spread of smoke at ambient temperatures — commonly required on flat entrance doors and doors onto escape routes.

Where FD30 is typically required

FD30 is the workhorse rating for domestic and light-commercial work. Common situations include:

• The door between an integral garage and the house.
• Doors to habitable rooms off the stairway in loft conversions and three-storey homes.
• Flat entrance doors (usually FD30S, with smoke seals).
• Doors protecting escape routes in smaller buildings.

Where FD60 steps in

FD60 is specified where the fire risk, building height or compartment strategy demands a longer period of protection — for example in compartment walls, larger commercial and public buildings, and many higher-rise residential blocks. On any non-trivial project the requirement should come from the building's fire strategy or a competent fire engineer, not a rule of thumb. If in doubt, ask before you order.

It's a doorset, not just a door

This is the single most important thing to understand. A fire door's rating applies to the complete assembly as tested — leaf, frame, intumescent seals, hinges, closer, latch, glazing and any vision panels. Swap a component for something outside the certified specification and you can invalidate the rating. That's why buying a certified doorset (door and frame supplied and evidenced together) removes a huge amount of risk compared with sourcing a bare leaf and matching it to whatever frame and ironmongery are to hand.

Certification and the evidence you need

A fire door is only as good as the evidence behind it. Look for third-party certification — schemes such as BM TRADA Q-Mark or Certifire — rather than a simple claim of compliance. On site you should be able to produce:

• The test certificate or classification report for the doorset.
• The field of application document, which sets out the permitted variations (sizes, glazing, ironmongery) the test evidence covers.
• Installation instructions — following them is part of maintaining the rating.

Certified doors usually carry a label or colour-coded plug (often in the top edge) identifying the manufacturer and certification. Keep the documentation — under the Building Safety regime, being able to demonstrate the "golden thread" of evidence is increasingly expected, and in higher-risk buildings responsible persons must arrange regular fire-door checks.

Ironmongery and intumescent — don't cut corners

Fire performance depends on the whole assembly working together. That means fire-rated hinges, a certified closer (tested to BS EN 1154) where required, intumescent strips that expand to seal the gaps in a fire, and smoke seals where an "S" rating applies. Fitting standard ironmongery to a fire door is one of the most common — and most serious — ways a certified door ends up non-compliant.

Installation makes or breaks it

Even a perfect doorset fails if it's fitted badly. Gaps around the leaf are typically specified at 2–4mm, the correct intumescent must be present and continuous, and the frame must be fixed as tested. A fire door is only certified if it's installed to the manufacturer's instructions by someone competent — increasingly, third-party installer certification is expected on higher-risk work.

Our composite and steel fire doorsets come with the certification and test evidence you need to satisfy building control and the responsible person — supplied as a complete, evidenced assembly so nothing about the rating is left to guesswork.