Class 1 IM furniture for hotels: what is actually required

In short. In newly built hotels in Italy, upholstered furniture and mattresses must be Class 1 IM, type-approved under the ministerial decree of 26 June 1984. Approval applies to the finished piece, not to its materials: an approved fabric on an approved filling does not automatically make an approved sofa. This is where most projects get stuck.

What Class 1 IM is

IM stands for imbottiti, upholstered goods. It is the highest reaction-to-fire class Italy provides for upholstered furniture, measured by the UNI 9175 test: a small flame is applied to the piece and its behaviour is observed. The governing framework is the ministerial decree of 26 June 1984 on the classification and type-approval of materials for fire prevention purposes.

It is not a class you declare. It is obtained through a laboratory test on a prototype, and the resulting approval is valid for five years and renewable.

Where the regulation requires it

For hotels and other tourist accommodation the technical rule is the decree of 9 April 1994. Clause 6.2, on new buildings, sets out among other things that:

• in entrance halls, corridors, lobbies, stairs, ramps and passageways, class 1 materials may cover no more than 50% of the total surface — floor, walls, ceiling and the horizontal projection of stairs — while the remainder must be class 0, non-combustible;
• in all other rooms floors may be class 2, and other finishes class 1, or class 2 where the room is protected by an automatic extinguishing system;
• upholstered furniture and mattresses must be class 1 IM;
• all these materials must be type-approved under the decree of 26 June 1984.

For existing properties, clause 19.2 recalls the same requirements but excludes the one on upholstered furniture. That difference is worth money and should be checked before quoting: refurbishing an existing hotel is not the same as furnishing a new one.

There is also the route of the Italian Fire Prevention Code, with its vertical technical rule for accommodation. Which of the two applies to your site is set by the fire safety design: ask the designer before anything goes into production, because it changes what you have to certify.

Where projects get stuck: an approved fabric is not an approved assembly

This is the most expensive misunderstanding in the whole specification.

Individual materials — covering, filling — are each tested on their own and get their own classification. The upholstered piece, however, is tested assembled: fabric, filling, frame and stitching together, as it will be in the room.

And the result is not the sum of the parts. Components that perform well on their own can fail once assembled, because reactions occur between materials that a single-sample test never shows.

In practice: a fabric with its own Class 1 IM certificate does not make the sofa it is fitted to Class 1 IM. A supplier who hands over a folder of material certificates instead of the approval of the assembly is handing over the wrong document — and you find out at inspection, with the furniture already in the rooms.

What happens if the covering is changed

Approval lapses automatically if the product is modified in any way, and changing the covering is a modification.

It happens more often than you would think: the project is closed, the interior designer changes the leather on one armchair at the last minute, and that armchair falls outside the approval. If the variant is not already covered by a test, the test has to be done again. Which is why, when a job allows covering variants, those variants must be decided before testing, not after.

The documents to ask your supplier for

Before delivery, not after:

• the Class 1 IM type-approval certificate for the upholstered piece, in the manufacturer's name, with number and date — and a check that it has not expired, since validity is five years;
• the mark of conformity to the approved prototype on the piece itself, or the declaration of conformity to the prototype issued with each delivery;
• a match between what the approval describes and what was delivered: same construction, same covering, same filling.

That last check is the one most often skipped, and the first one the fire brigade looks at.

Why a supplier who manufactures makes the difference

On a hotel project the most valuable thing is not the price of the sofa. It is time.

A hotel that opens late does not just lose the weeks of delay: it loses the bookings already taken, the season, the first word of mouth. And an inspection that stops over the wrong certificate is not solved in a day — it means dismantling, shipping back, re-testing, re-scheduling.

Products made to standard, certified and delivered on the agreed dates mean fast openings, no dead time on site and no headaches for the people who have to hand the project over. The client opens and starts invoicing, knowing everything is in order.

That is why manufacturing in house is not an industrial detail but a guarantee on the date: a company with its own workshop answers for itself, not for a subcontractor's delay.

Talk to us The contract division

This page is a practical guide, not a technical opinion. Fire safety design and conformity checks remain the responsibility of the appointed professional and of the fire brigade.