Offices & Commercial Buildings

What fire rating do office curtains need?

Curtains in offices and commercial buildings are specified against BS 5867 Part 2, the British Standard for the flammability of curtains, drapes and window blinds. Workplaces are occupied by people who are awake and able to leave, so most office schemes specify Type B, the general contract standard that applies across the majority of public and commercial premises. Type C, the more demanding test, is normally reserved for sleeping accommodation and buildings with a harder evacuation profile.

The building's fire risk assessment, or the project fire strategy on a new fit-out, confirms the requirement. Every fabric on this page carries a current BS 5867 Part 2 test report, supplied with the order so it can go straight into the O&M manual or in front of the landlord's facilities team.

Choosing curtain fabrics for an office

Workspace schemes tend to want clean plains, textures and semi-plains with dependable light control, which is what this collection is built around. The decisions that come up most often:

• Dimout for meeting rooms and open-plan floors. Dimout curtains cut glare on screens and whiteboards without blacking the room out, and keep daylight in the space.
• Blackout for presentation and training rooms. Blackout fire retardant curtains give full light exclusion through the cloth itself for AV suites, boardrooms and rooms used for video calls.
• Voiles for ground-floor privacy. Street-facing and ground-floor glazing usually wants daytime privacy without losing light. A voile on the inner track, with a dimout on the outer, covers both.
• Acoustics. Heavier textured cloths take the edge off reverberation in glazed meeting rooms and open-plan areas; worth considering wherever hard surfaces dominate.
• Track compatibility. Heading type affects both the look and what hardware the curtains hang from. Confirm the track or pole before ordering so the heading is made up correctly. Wave headings on a channel track are the usual choice for a contemporary office.

Specifying and ordering

Every curtain is made to measure in the UK. Choose the fabric, enter your drop and width, select a heading (pencil pleat, eyelet, wave or pinch pleat), and the configurator prices it immediately. For a multi-floor fit-out or a portfolio of sites, or where you would rather send us a window schedule, request a quote and we will price the whole project as a single quotation across all the fabric houses we carry, including Panaz, Skopos, Edmund Bell, Bancroft, Camira and Vescom.

Office refurbishments frequently run floor by floor over months. Dye lots vary between production runs, so if the scheme will be phased, tell us at the outset and we will advise on the most reliable approach to matching later batches. Fire test certificates are supplied for your fire risk assessment and O&M files, and samples are available on every fabric.

Office curtain FAQs

Do office curtains have to be fire retardant?

In practice, yes. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 places a duty on the responsible person to control fire risk, and fire risk assessors, landlords and insurers will expect curtains in a commercial building to meet BS 5867 Part 2, normally Type B. Domestic curtains are not tested to it.

Curtains or blinds for an office?

Blinds suit small, regular windows and individual desks. Curtains come into their own on tall glazing, meeting rooms and reception areas, where they soften the acoustics and the look of a hard-surfaced space and can be specified in the same fabric across a floor. Many schemes use both.

Can I see samples before ordering?

Yes. Request samples from the product page, or tell us the scheme colours and we will put together a selection.