Best Ways to Make Your Home More Fireproof

If you’re like me, you spend a lot of your time worrying about all the ways your house can literally disappear. Fire, for example, is exceptionally efficient at transforming your cozy house from the place where you play video games and make poor dietary decisions into a smoldering pile of insurance claims. And house fires aren’t exactly uncommon: In 2022 there were more than 374,000 residential fires in the U.S. alone. Wildfires are always in the news—and they’re getting worse (thanks, climate change!)—but you don’t need one to see your house go up in smoke: Nearly half of residential fires are started in the kitchen.

The good news is that you can take some pretty simple—and very affordable—steps to make your home more fireproof no matter how old it is, where it’s located, or how it was designed and built. By adding these components gradually, you can keep costs manageable while slowly reducing your risk of fire.

Paints, sprays, and coatings

Fire needs fuel to burn, and your home is basically made out of fuel. Just about everything in a house—especially a wood-framed house—will cheerfully burn once fire shows up.

• Paint. One cheap way to at least slow down a fire is to use a fire-retardant paint. These paints are typically what are known as “intumescent paint.” They work by forming a protective coating (or “char”) over their surface when they encounter flames. That protective coating prevents the fire from spreading—at least for a while. If you’re going to paint the house anyway, you can easily sub in fire-retardant paint and make the place more fireproof at the same time.

• Sprays. You can also purchase a fire-retardant fabric spray that can make your curtains, upholstery, carpets, and other fabrics a little harder to burn, which can at least slow down a fire in your home. Just be sure to test it out before you just go spraying it everywhere to make sure it doesn’t stain or otherwise ruin your stuff.

• Exterior. Choosing a fire-resistant siding will harden your house just a little more against flames spreading from exterior sources. Cement siding, stucco, brick, and metal siding will act as a firebreak. If you have wood siding, you can purchase inexpensive coatings that will improve its fire resistance substantially, though keep in mind you’ll need to re-apply every few years to maintain its fire-resistant properties.

• Roof. Roofing materials are classified in terms of fire-resistance: Class A materials (which include clay, concrete, slate, and metal roofs) are the most fire-resistant. If you’re not looking to spend copious amounts of money on a new roof right now, you can also purchase roof coatings that can be applied DIY-fashion that will make your roof fire resistant in addition to protecting it from the sun, weather, and other damage.

Clear debris

Even if you don’t live in an area prone to wildfires, there’s one simple thing you can do to make your home more fire-resistant: Create a firebreak around your home. This can be as simple as clearing away any combustible debris, like dead leaves, branches, and other flammable materials. You can also trim back trees so branches don’t come close to the roof. Removing anything that could transmit flames to your home reduces the chances that a fire in another house spreads to yours.

Building materials

• Fire-rated windows and doors. If you want to harden your home further against potential fires, replacing your front door with a 90-minute fire door like this one and swapping out your windows for fire-rated, heat-reflecting windows like these can make a difference. This isn’t exactly a cheap project (especially the windows), but these windows and doors will stand up to the intense heat of a fire a lot longer, preventing it from engulfing your house and potentially giving the fire department time to put out the flames.

• Fire-resistant insulation. While most standard fiberglass insulation isn’t flammable itself, it’s usually backed by paper which very much is. Choosing insulation material like mineral wool can add a bit more fireproofing to your home if you’re already going to be opening walls or ceilings for other projects.

• Spark management. Fires often spread when a spark or ember blows over to your home from another. Adding a chimney cap with a spark arrestor and ember-resistant vents to the exterior of your home can help prevent sparks from infiltrating your home. And cleaning out your dryer vent, which is packed with kindling, is an easy way to make your home slightly more fireproof than it was yesterday.