Once a fire has started in a public building everyone should be able to escape to a place of safety, using the special designed escape routes. The level of protection of the escape routes varies depending on the level of risk of fire within the premises a particular public building. A number of factors are take in consideration in order to evaluate whether the public building has adequate escape routes, including the type and number of people using the premises, the age of the construction, the escape time, the number of exits and escape routes.

The fire exit signs in public facilities have the role to help identifying a route of escape in case that the building would be on fire. The fire exit signs should be placed in such locations that would help people to find an evacuation route quickly. The instructions on a proper fire exit sign must be clear for all the visitors and general public, as well as for the staff working in that building. The fire exit signs should respect certain signalising conventions and standards in order to be easy to recognise and understand. For this reason it is important to utilise only the mandatory type of fire exit signs in public facilities. 

In the past the fire exit signs were lighted by incandescent bulb lights that were covered by a translucent plastic cover. In case of having a fire in the building the smoke reduced the visibility and usually made the fire exit sign light to look dim and the sign difficult to see. That was one of their main flaws and the reason why the design of modern fire exit signs has changed. A good exit sign should be always easily seen, even in locations with poor visibility and especially in case of fire when the sign is most needed. The earlier fire exit signs used to have another flow in conception and design. The light behind the exit sign would go off because of lost of power in the building. Another issue was the fact that the fire exit signs were looking in the past similar to the regular safety lighting fixtures that were installed above doors. In order to avoid all these flaws of earlier fire exit signs were developed better designs.

The fire exit signs in public buildings in U.K. have to comply with all current fire regulations and the BS 5499 rules. The introduction of the EEC Directive in 1992 has created some confusion in the U.K. sign industry. Two main types of fire exit signs are in used in parallel in U.K., those which comply with the EEC Directive and those which comply with the British Standard 5499. The exit signs were originally text only and the arrow was used only when appropriate. The EEC Directive introduced a pictogram in order to facilitate the understanding of the fire exit signs no matter of the language. Some U.K. sign manufacturing companies have continued to create signs based on the British Standard while others have chosen to comply with the EEC Directive. An international standard called ISO 3864 was recently adopted in U.K. and this new standard replaced BS5499. It is expected that the adoption of this new standard will solve finally the issue of different designs of fire exit signs in U.K.