Fire Safety Signage for Airbnbs and Holiday Lets: A Complete Guide

Picture a fire officer arriving at your holiday let after a guest complaint. There is no fire action notice on the bedroom door, nothing marking where the extinguisher sits, and no fire exit signs in the Airbnb-style layout to point a guest out in the dark. Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 (the RRO 2005) that can trigger an enforcement notice, and in serious cases a prohibition notice that stops you letting the property. Fines for fire safety breaches in England and Wales are unlimited, and knowing the fire safety signs a holiday let needs is the cheap part of staying on the right side of the law.

Signage is one of the least expensive parts of fire safety to get right, yet hosts tend to fall into one of two camps. They either skip it entirely, or they cover a two bedroom cottage in the running-man forest you would expect in a shopping centre. This guide sets out what signage is proportionate for a small self-catering property, where fire exit signs are genuinely required, and why more plastic on the walls is not the same as safer.

What fire safety signs a holiday let actually needs

Start from the law. The RRO 2005 makes you, the responsible person, decide what signage is needed based on your fire risk assessment. It does not hand you a fixed shopping list. The Government guidance for England, "Making your small paying-guest-accommodation safe from fire", is the document local fire officers work from, and its whole tone is proportionate. A small domestic-style let is not a hotel and should not be signed like one.

For a typical two or three bedroom cottage or flat, the signage that earns its place is short: a fire action notice, exit route signs only where the way out is not obvious, fire door keep shut signs on any fire doors, and a location sign for each extinguisher or fire blanket. In many small lets you can count the required signs on one hand. That is the point. Every sign should answer a question a guest might actually have at two in the morning.

The fire action notice: the one sign you cannot skip

If you display nothing else, display a fire action notice. It tells a guest what to do the moment they discover a fire or hear the alarm: raise the alarm, leave by the nearest exit, do not stop for belongings, and call 999 from a safe place. For a self-catering let with no on-site staff, it should also make clear that guests must get out and stay out rather than tackle the fire themselves.

Put one in each bedroom, ideally on or beside the door, and one near the main entrance. Keep the wording specific to the property: name the assembly point (a spot in the garden or across the road), and give the full address so a panicking guest can read it to the fire service. A generic notice bought off the shelf that still says "assemble at the designated point" helps nobody. For the detail on layout, wording and where each notice should go, see our guide to fire action notices for holiday lets.

Fire exit signs: only where the way out is not obvious

Here is where hosts most often over-do it. In a house or flat, the way out is usually the way people came in, and everyone can see it. You do not need a green running-man sign over a front door that opens straight onto the street. The RRO 2005 asks for escape routes to be indicated where the direction of travel is not immediately obvious, not everywhere.

So think about the awkward spots. A converted barn where the guest exit is not the door they parked next to. A basement bedroom where you turn the wrong way at the bottom of the stairs. A first-floor flat with a shared corridor to a rear fire exit. In those cases a directional arrow or an exit sign genuinely helps, and it should be sited at the decision point, not fifteen metres before it. If your layout is simple and the exits are visible, adding exit signs mostly adds clutter.

Signage never replaces the escape route itself. Guests still need clear, unobstructed ways out and windows that meet escape dimensions where a room relies on them. We cover that side in holiday let fire escape requirements.

Fire door keep shut signs

If your let has fire doors, for example a door between an integral garage and the house, or self-closing doors protecting a stairway, they need "Fire door keep shut" signs. The sign matters because a fire door only works closed, and guests will happily wedge one open with a suitcase if nothing tells them not to. A small blue-and-white disc at eye level on the door does the job.

Do not sign ordinary internal doors as fire doors. It confuses guests, and if a fire officer spots a "keep shut" sign on a door that is plainly not fire-rated, it flags that your assessment has not been thought through.

Signs for extinguishers and fire equipment

Where you provide firefighting equipment, mark it. Most small lets should have at least a fire blanket in the kitchen, and many add a multi-purpose extinguisher near the main exit. A location sign mounted above the equipment lets a guest find it fast and, just as usefully, helps you notice if it has been moved or removed between changeovers.

Keep the equipment itself sensible. A single kitchen fire blanket and one extinguisher sited on an escape route is right for most properties. Servicing follows BS 5306 for extinguishers, and a self-catering let does not need the banks of equipment a commercial kitchen carries. Sign what you have, and no more.

Photoluminescent or illuminated: when it matters

A sign is useless in a power cut if nobody can see it. That is why the guidance points holiday lets towards photoluminescent signs, the kind that absorb light during the day and glow for a period once the room goes dark. For a small let they are the practical choice: no wiring, low cost, and they keep working when the lights fail during exactly the emergency you bought them for.

Larger or more complex properties, particularly anything over two storeys or with internal escape routes that get no natural light, may need emergency lighting rather than relying on glowing signs alone. If your assessment flags a route that would be pitch black in a mains failure, that is a lighting question as much as a signage one. Match photoluminescent signs to genuinely dark decision points, and do not scatter them across a bright hallway for effect.

The real risk: over-signing a home

It is tempting to think that more signs mean more safety, so a cautious host tapes notices to every door and an exit sign in every room. The opposite happens. When a guest sees signs everywhere, they stop reading any of them, and the one notice that actually matters, the fire action notice by the bed, disappears into the noise. A holiday let is meant to feel like a home, and a wall of statutory plastic both spoils the stay and buries the message.

Get the balance right by signing to the risk, not to your nerves. A fire action notice in every bedroom, a couple of directional signs only where the route is unclear, keep-shut signs on real fire doors, and a marker over each piece of equipment. That is a properly signed small let. If a fire officer asks why a sign is or is not there, the honest answer should always be "because the fire risk assessment said so", and that only works if you have actually done one.

Next steps

Signage is a small chapter of a bigger duty. Under the RRO 2005 you must have a fire risk assessment that decides your signage, your alarms, your escape routes and your equipment as one connected plan, and from 2024 the guidance for England was strengthened under Section 156 of the Building Safety Act 2022 to make that written record clearer. Work through the whole picture with our complete holiday let fire risk assessment guide, which shows how signage fits alongside everything else you are responsible for.

When you are ready to produce the document itself, FRASafe's holiday let fire risk assessment walks you through every area required by HMSO guidance, completed online in 30 to 45 minutes for £45. It prompts you on the signage your specific layout needs, records your decisions, and gives you the written report a fire officer, insurer or the coming registration scheme will expect to see.