Fire Safety Signs

DEFINITION:

Fire safety signs are used to provide health and safety information, either to warn you of a hazard, to provide an instruction or to give you safety information. Safety signs can be a variety of colours – usually red, green, yellow or blue – and may contain images, words or a mixture of the two. It’s essential that you adhere to the fire safety signs in your workplace and any other public space: they are there for your safety and ignoring them could have serious consequences.

British & International Standards include (but are not limited to) the following:

BS EN ISO 7010:2012+A5:2015 – Graphical symbols. Safety colours and safety signs. Registered safety signs. With increasing trade and travel across international borders, it is essential to communicate safety information in a common language. So ISO 7010 specifies safety signs that use standardised symbols instead of words. The standard also reduces the potential for confusion and accidents by ensuring that there is only one sign for each meaning.

BS 5499-10:2014 – Safety signs, including fire safety signs, Code of practice for the use of safety signs, including fire safety signs.

BS 5499-4:2013 – Safety signs. Code of practice for escape route signing.

BS EN ISO 7010:2012 – Graphical symbols. Safety colours and safety signs. Registered safety signs.

ISO 3864-4:2011 – Graphical symbols — Safety colours and safety signs — Part 4: Colorimetric and photometric properties of safety sign materials. This standard establishes the colorimetric and photometric requirements and test methods for the colours of safety signs to be used in workplaces and public areas. It provides the colorimetric and photometric specifications for the named safety and contrast colours prescribed in ISO 3864­1.

BS ISO 3864-3:2012 – Graphical symbols. Safety colours and safety signs. Design principles for graphical symbols for use in safety signs. gives principles, criteria and guidance for the design of graphical symbols for use in safety signs as defined in ISO 3864‑1, and for the safety sign element of product safety labels as defined in ISO 3864‑2.

ISO 3864-1:2011 – Graphical symbols — Safety colours and safety signs — Part 1: Design principles for safety signs and safety markings. This standard establishes the safety identification colours and design principles for safety signs and safety markings to be used in workplaces and in public areas for the purpose of accident prevention, fire protection, health hazard information and emergency evacuation. It also establishes the basic principles to be applied when developing standards containing safety signs.

BS ISO 7010:2011 – Graphical symbols — Safety colours and safety signs — Registered safety signs. This standard prescribes safety signs for the purposes of accident prevention, fire protection, health hazard information and emergency evacuation. The shape and colour of each safety sign are according to ISO 3864-1 and the design of the graphical symbols is according to ISO 3864-3.

BS ISO 3864-4:2011 – Graphical symbols. Safety colours and safety signs. Colorimetric and photometric properties of safety sign materials.

BS ISO 3864-1:2011 – Graphical symbols. Safety colours and safety signs. Design principles for safety signs and safety markings.

ISO 16069:2004 – Graphical symbols — Safety signs — Safety way guidance systems (SWGS). describes the principles governing the design and application of visual components used to create a safety way guidance system (SWGS).

ISO 17398: 2004 – Safety colours and safety signs — Classification, performance and durability of safety signs. This standard specifies requirements for a performance-related classification system for safety signs according to expected service environment, principal materials, photometric properties, means of illumination, fixing methods and surface. Performance criteria and test methods are specified in ISO 17398:2004 so that properties related to durability and expected service life can be characterized and specified at the time of the product’s delivery to the purchaser.