Smoke Alarm Placement: The Basics Every Homeowner Should Know

The general pattern across Canadian codes is a smoke alarm on every storey, plus one inside each sleeping room and one in the hallway or area immediately outside sleeping rooms. The idea is that no matter which room a fire starts in, an alarm close enough to sleeping occupants will wake them before smoke does.

Placement near kitchens and bathrooms gets extra attention too, since steam and cooking smoke are the leading cause of nuisance alarms — and a homeowner who disables a chirping alarm because it keeps going off from toast is a bigger safety risk than the toast ever was. Interconnected alarms, where one going off triggers all of them, are increasingly the standard for new construction.