What does the colour of a fire extinguisher tag mean?
Updated August 2026Reviewed August 2026
It is one of the most-repeated pieces of received wisdom in building safety: the tag colour tells you which year the extinguisher was serviced. It is worth knowing where that idea comes from, and what the rules that were actually read for this page say instead.
The short answer
No rule read in the research behind this page sets a national colour code tying tag colour to a service year. What was read is two state rules that set tag colour for reasons that have nothing to do with the year, and they set it in opposite directions.
The date on a tag is what tells you the date. The colour, in most places, tells you which company printed it.
Where the belief comes from
Colour-per-year is a real convention. Service companies have long printed a run of tags in one colour for a given year, so a technician walking a building can see at a glance which units are on the current round and which were done last time. It is genuinely useful and it saves time.
What it is not is a rule. A convention adopted by companies to organise their own work is not a specification a building can be measured against, and it does not survive a change of service company, a state line, or a firm that prints its tags in its own brand colour.
What the state rules that were read actually say about colour
The Texas rule at 28 TAC § 34.520 says a service tag must not be red. Red is reserved there for the separate out-of-service tag regime, so colour is carrying a status signal rather than a date.
The Georgia rule at 120-3-23-.14 says the service tag is light yellow, and at least 3 inches by 5½ inches. Colour is fixed for every year, so in Georgia a colour change cannot mean a new year, because the colour does not change.
Those are two states whose rules were fetched and read. They contradict each other on colour, and neither ties colour to a year. That is as close to a settled answer as this evidence allows.
What this page does not claim
It does not quote NFPA 10, because this research did not obtain the text of any NFPA standard. It does not assert that no state anywhere ties tag colour to a year, because forty-six jurisdictions could not be confirmed either way and an unconfirmed jurisdiction is an admitted blank rather than an implied absence.
What it does say is narrower and better supported: there is no national colour code in evidence, the two state rules that were read set colour for other purposes, and reading a year off a colour is a habit rather than a method.
What to read on a tag instead
Read the punched or written month and year of service, which is the field that carries the date. Read the technician identification and licence or permit number, which is what ties the work to a person authorised to do it. Read the firm name and licence number. Where the tag carries it, read the next-due or hydrostatic-test-due date.
Then check it against the record rather than against a memory of what colour last year's tags were. A tag can fall off, fade, or get painted over; a dated per-serial record does not.
Where to check your own state
Each state page in the licensing layer carries what this research could confirm about that state's tag rule, and says plainly where it could confirm nothing. Ask your state's licensing agency for the tag rule by number before you assume a colour means anything at all. Cadences vary by jurisdiction — verify with your AHJ.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Do fire extinguisher tag colours mean the year of service?
- Not as a matter of any rule read for this page. Colour-per-year is a service-company convention. The two state tag rules read here set colour for other reasons, and one of them fixes a single colour for every year.
- Why do I see different coloured tags in the same building?
- Usually because different service companies printed them, or because a company changed its stock. Colour is not a reliable indicator of when a unit was last serviced. The date field on the tag is.
- What does a red tag mean?
- In Texas, red is reserved for the out-of-service tag regime, which is separate from service tags. Elsewhere the meaning depends on the state and on the service company, so confirm it locally rather than assuming.
Cadences vary by jurisdiction — verify with your AHJ.
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