Fridge freezer safety

Your fridge freezer runs all the time in your home, so it's important that you use it correctly and safely to reduce the chance of an electrical fire.

It's also worth noting that, however careful you are, some fires might be beyond your control. To keep your home safe in the event of a fire, make sure your kitchen has a smoke alarm installed.

Need a new fridge freezer? Head to our round-up of the best fridge freezers.

Fridge freezer safety tips

To minimise the risk of fire in your kitchen, take the following precautionary steps:

• Refer to your instruction manual to make sure you keep the recommended distance between your refrigeration appliance and the wall, and that there are no other obstructions that can restrict airflow. 
• Make sure vents aren't blocked and the area around your appliances is kept clean to prevent the build-up of dust and grease. 
• Plug your refrigeration appliance directly into the wall rather than using an extension lead, and ensure the sockets aren't overloaded with too many plugs. 
• If your appliance starts making a strange noise, don't ignore it. If you suspect there might be a problem, always unplug it and contact the manufacturer or a qualified repair technician. 
• Don't be tempted to put your fridge freezer in the hallway: if a fire does break out in your home, you need all escape routes to be clear. 
• Fit smoke alarms: white goods are often left switched on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and a smoke alarm will wake you up if a fire starts while you're sleeping. You should fit enough smoke alarms to cover all areas where a fire could start – a minimum of one per floor – and test them regularly. 
• Fit a heat alarm in your kitchen. This will give you early warning of a temperature increase caused by fire, but will not be set off by cooking fumes. 
• Register your appliance, so you'll be informed if the manufacturer identifies any issues with it. 
• Be careful with refrigerant, which is used in fridges, freezers and fridge freezers to extract the heat from the device. In modern appliances, it's used in very small quantities, but it's highly flammable, so be careful when transporting a refrigerator and don't plug it in if it looks damaged in any way. To reduce the risk of refrigerant leaks, don't defrost the appliance using anything sharp. 
• Be careful if you're thinking about using a big refrigerator in a small room. The proportion of refrigerant to normal air could get too high in the unlikely event of a leak, which will make the air more flammable. Common advice is that the room needs to have one cubic metre of space for every 8g of refrigerant used in the appliance. You can find the amount of refrigerant on your appliance's rating plate (your manual will tell you where this is).

Want more fridge tips? These food storage tips will help make your food last longer 

Flammable plastic vs aluminium-backed fridge freezers: our campaign

All fridges, freezers and fridge freezers need insulation to keep cool. This insulation is flammable, so it's essential that it's sufficiently protected in the event of a fire.

All refrigeration appliances used to have backing protecting this insulation made from either plastic, metal or aluminium laminate, depending on the make and model of the appliance. 

In 2017, Which? tested backing samples from more than 100 appliances, across every refrigeration brand we had on our website. We applied an open flame to each sample, and any product that was unable to withstand the flame for 30 seconds we deemed unsafe and made it a Don’t Buy fridge freezer.

In September 2017, we launched a campaign calling on manufacturers to immediately stop producing refrigeration appliances with flammable plastic backs. In the apparent absence of any action from the then newly created Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS), we started conducting fire testing on refrigerator backings.

Hundreds more products also became Don’t Buys because the manufacturer either confirmed, or our own research indicated, that their backing was identical to a product we tested and found to be unsafe.

New safety standards

Following our campaign against fire-risk fridge freezers, new British safety standards designed to make these appliances safer were introduced on 11 July 2019.

Fridge freezers with flammable plastic backs are no longer being produced, but it's still legal for retailers to sell any plastic-backed models that have already been made, and older models could still be used in homes or sold second-hand. We recently found a plastic backed fridge in our testing and made it a Don't Buy.

Detect danger and sound the alarm quickly every time with the best smoke alarms from our expert tests.

Should I worry if my fridge freezer is plastic-backed?

Those who already own an appliance with a flammable plastic back should be reassured that the likelihood of a refrigerator fire is very low. Our March 2018 research analysing government fire data found that only 8% of fires caused by faulty household appliances were caused by fridge freezers, fridges or freezers.

It's also important to note that the material used in the backing can allow an existing fire to spread – it isn’t the cause of fire itself.

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