Home safety is not just a matter of personal caution. It is the meeting point between technical standards, product regulations, rules on systems, maintenance duties and, in the most serious cases, even broader legal implications.

It is not a marginal issue: among the most frequent injuries in daily living environments are falls, burns, poisoning and other preventable events, which the World Health Organization considers a significant public health concern.

1. The first level: international standards and European rules

When talking about home safety, it is necessary to distinguish between technical standards and legal obligations. Standards are not always laws in themselves; however, they define the technical “state of the art” and become crucial because laws often refer to them, or use them as a benchmark to prove that a system or product is safe.

From a methodological point of view, the best-known reference is ISO 31000, which describes the risk management process: identifying hazards, analysing risks, evaluating them, treating them, monitoring them and communicating them. It is not a standard designed specifically for a private apartment, but it provides the basic model that is also useful at home: understanding what could go wrong, with what probability and with what consequences.

For the technical side, two families of international standards are particularly important. The IEC 60364 series concerns low-voltage electrical installations and sets out safety principles and requirements; IEC 60335-1, on the other hand, concerns the safety of household and similar electrical appliances. In other words, safety at home is built both on the installation and on the appliances connected to it.

In the European Union, this technical framework is intertwined with market regulations. Regulation (EU) 2023/988 on general product safety requires consumer products placed on the market to be safe and imposes obligations on economic operators, including cooperation with authorities, recall management and incident reporting. In addition, in Europe the use of harmonised standards can create a presumption of conformity with applicable legal requirements.

For some domestic risks there are also sector-specific European rules. The Low Voltage Directive 2014/35/EU protects the safety of electrical equipment within certain voltage limits, including many household products; Regulation (EU) 2016/426 governs appliances burning gaseous fuels. Part of home safety therefore depends on what has been properly designed, certified and placed on the market even before the product reaches the living room or kitchen.

2. The second level: Italian rules on homes and installations

In Italy, the underlying principle is old but still central: systems and materials must be made according to the rules of good workmanship. This is stated by Law 186 of 1968, which adds a decisive point: what is built according to CEI standards is considered to have been made according to the rules of good workmanship for the electrical sector. This is where technical standards acquire a concrete legal weight.

The key discipline for systems in buildings is Ministerial Decree 37/2008, which covers, among others, electrical, radio-television and electronic systems, heating and air-conditioning systems, water systems, gas systems, lifts and fire-fighting systems. The decree requires these systems to be carried out by qualified companies and according to the rules of good workmanship, referring to UNI and CEI standards as a compliance benchmark. Today the text must be read in its updated framework, also in light of the amendments introduced by Ministerial Decree no. 130 of 17 July 2025.

A very important practical step is documentation. At the end of the work, the installer must issue the declaration of conformity (DiCo), together with the required attachments. For systems built before the entry into force of Ministerial Decree 37/2008, when the DiCo is missing, in certain cases a declaration of compliance (DiRi) issued by a qualified professional or technical manager may be used, within the limits provided by law. For home safety, this document is not a bureaucratic detail: it is proof that the system has been checked and assessed according to technical criteria.

On an operational level, some Italian technical standards are particularly relevant. CEI 64-8, now in its 9th edition which came into force on 1 November 2024, is the main reference for low-voltage electrical user installations. For domestic gas systems, a key reference is UNI 7129-1, which establishes criteria for the construction and refurbishment of internal systems. Here too the message is simple: safety at home is not improvised, it is planned and implemented according to codified technical criteria.

For heating systems, the framework is governed by Presidential Decree 74/2013, which sets out the general criteria for operation, inspection, maintenance and checks, together with the system of installation booklets and energy efficiency inspection reports. In practical terms, boilers and heating systems are not items to be neglected: they require traceability, regular checks and documented maintenance.