Installing smoke alarms

Smoke alarms can be put in all rooms, except the kitchen and the bathroom as the smoke from cooking and steam from hot water can cause “false alarms”.

Smoke alarms should be positioned 30 centimetres away from walls and light fittings. This is because light fittings attract dust, which can cause false alarms, and sometimes smoke doesn’t go right into the corner of the ceiling in the early stages of a fire.

As a minimum, fit one smoke alarm on every floor of your home, ideally on the ceiling of a hallway or landing.
In rooms, particularly bedrooms, where you have electrical equipment (a television, games console or where you charge items), remember that if the detector is outside the room on the landing and the door to the room is closed, it will take more time for the smoke from a fire inside the room to get out and reach the alarm, so consider fitting smoke alarms in these rooms.

If you have a spare room where no-one sleeps and there are no electrical appliances in that room, then that room is unlikely to have a fire so it may not need a smoke alarm.