Do built-in furniture fall under the Construction Products Regulation or under the ESPR?

Built-in furniture: furniture function or building function is decisive

Whether a built-in piece of furniture falls under the Construction Products Regulation or under the ESPR depends in most cases on the function it performs, not on whether it is free-standing or fixed. A kitchen cabinet, a fitted wardrobe or a fixed desk remains in practice a piece of furniture if its function is storage, seating or working — even when it is attached to a wall, floor or another cabinet. The Construction Products Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2024/3110) is written for products that are permanently incorporated into a building and whose performance counts towards the essential characteristics of that building itself, such as load-bearing capacity, fire safety or sound insulation. A piece of furniture that happens to be fixed does not automatically change its character as a result. Only when a built-in element also plays a role in those building properties — for example as part of a fire-resistant partition wall — does the Construction Products Regulation come into play for that specific aspect.

For whom this is relevant, and for whom it is not

This distinction is relevant for manufacturers and importers of fitted kitchens, fitted wardrobes, fitted cupboards, built-in seating benches and comparable project furniture that is supplied to or installed in construction. It is not relevant for loose furniture without a building function, such as chairs, tables or free-standing cabinets: these fall unquestionably within the furniture domain. It is equally irrelevant for building elements that have no furniture function, such as load-bearing structures, facade elements or fire-resistant walls without storage or seating function: these fall unquestionably under the Construction Products Regulation. The difficult area lies precisely between these two extremes: products that appear to be both furniture and building elements, such as a permanently built-in cabinet wall that also serves as a partition between two rooms. This platform and the digital product passport created on it are concerned only with the furniture side of a product — not with any CE marking or performance declaration that may apply separately to the building function.

Neither of these dates is yet fixed for this precise demarcation

There is currently no established, product-specific list that specifies for each type of built-in furniture under which regulation it falls. The ESPR is a framework regulation: Article 1 determines the subject matter and scope and regulates how this regulation relates to other Union legislation that already sets requirements for the same aspects of a product, so that there are no duplicate or conflicting rules. For furniture, the concrete requirements — and with them also the precise product group description in which a built-in piece of furniture does or does not count — must still be laid down in a delegated act. This has not yet been published for furniture; the platform expects a working digital passport around 2030, but that date is not yet fixed. Until this publication, there is no obligation for furniture to have a digital product passport, and there is therefore no official, published demarcation text specifically for built-in furniture to fall back on. The Construction Products Regulation itself is already established and regulates its own procedures for CE marking and performance declarations for products that fall under it, separately from this furniture process.

How to assess this in practice

If there is doubt about a built-in product, it is useful first to establish its primary function: does the product primarily serve storage, seating or working, or does it contribute to a property of the building itself such as load-bearing capacity, fire resistance, sound insulation or the energy performance of the building envelope. A second step is to look at how the product is sold and installed: as a standalone piece of furniture that is fixed in place on site, or as part of a building system for which a performance declaration and CE marking are already issued. A third step is to check whether CE marking under the Construction Products Regulation already exists for the element: this is a concrete signal that it is being treated as a construction product in that respect. If the conclusion remains that the product is fundamentally furniture, it is useful in the longer term to maintain in a structured manner the data that will later be needed for the digital product passport (materials, origin, composition), so that these do not have to be researched again. In a borderline case where both a furniture and a building function are plausible, it is advisable to document your own assessment and, once the delegated act for furniture appears, to compare that assessment against the final product group description.

The basis: Construction Products Regulation and Article 1 of the ESPR

The Construction Products Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2024/3110) applies to products manufactured to be permanently incorporated in buildings and whose performance affects the performance of the building itself in relation to the essential characteristics that apply to it. Article 1 of the ESPR (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781) describes the subject matter and scope of the ecodesign regulation and the manner in which overlap with other sectoral Union legislation is prevented, so that the same aspect of a product is not regulated twice. From these two starting points follows the distinction between furniture function and building function as described above, although a delegated act that specifies this for furniture is not yet in place.

Anyone currently producing or supplying built-in furniture can best start by recording the function and form of sale of each model, and getting their own material and origin data in order — this work is necessary anyway once the rules for furniture become concrete, regardless of which regulation a specific product ultimately falls under.