How to Price Fire and Smoke Damage Restoration Jobs: A 2026 Guide

A kitchen fire call sounds simple until you're standing in it. A pan caught, the smoke alarm did its job, the fire department knocked it down before the cabinets fully burned — and now the homeowner wants a number. Here's the problem: a kitchen fire with greasy protein soot on every surface costs two to three times more to clean than a dry-smoke fire of the same size, and you can't tell which one you've got until you run a dry sponge over the wall.

Most restoration contractors who are new to fire jobs price them the way they'd price a water loss — square footage times a rate, done. That works until the adjuster asks why a 300 sq ft kitchen cost $9,000 to clean when a neighbor's contractor quoted $4,000 for a kitchen fire the same size. The answer is almost never the square footage. It's the soot.

Here's how to price a fire and smoke restoration job so the number holds up from the first walkthrough to the final invoice.

Why square footage lies to you on a fire job

Soot isn't one material. It behaves differently depending on what burned, and what burned changes the cleaning method, the chemicals, and the hours a job actually takes.

Dry smoke comes from a fast, high-heat fire — wood, paper, that kind of fuel. It leaves a powdery residue that vacuums and dry sponges can mostly lift. It's the cheapest soot to clean, and also the least common kind contractors get called for, since fast hot fires tend to do more structural damage too.

Wet smoke comes from a slower, lower-heat fire — plastics, foam, synthetic fabrics. It leaves a smeary, sticky residue that spreads further and penetrates deeper into porous material. It takes more passes and more solvent per square foot than dry smoke.

Protein smoke is the one that wrecks a quote built on square footage alone. It comes from cooking fires — burned food, grease — and it's nearly invisible. Walk into a kitchen after a protein fire and you might not see obvious soot, but the smell will tell you everything, and so will the yellowish film on cabinet doors once you touch one. Protein residue needs degreasers and deodorizing protocols that dry-smoke jobs never touch, which is exactly why a small kitchen fire can cost more per square foot than a bigger fire in a living room.

2026 price benchmarks by severity tier

National ranges vary a lot by market, and fire jobs swing harder than almost any other restoration category because scope depends so heavily on soot type and how much structure got cut out. Use these as a starting frame, not a quote.

Those premium-tier numbers aren't a typo. A fire that reaches the studs turns into a construction job wearing a restoration company's invoice, and it should price like one — labor, materials, permits, and markup, not a blended smoke-cleaning rate stretched to cover a framing crew.

The four line items inside every fire restoration quote

Bid a fire job as one lump number and you'll either overcharge the easy jobs or undercharge the hard ones. Break every quote into four buckets and price each on its own logic — soot and surface cleaning, odor and HVAC work, structural rebuild, and contents.

Soot and surface cleaning covers walls, ceilings, cabinets, and trim — the physical removal of residue. This is where soot type drives almost all the cost swing described above.

Odor and HVAC remediation matters because smell travels through ductwork whether the fire did or not. Thermal fogging, ozone treatment, and duct cleaning run $500 to $3,000 depending on house size and how far smoke spread before the fire department got it under control. Skip this step and the homeowner calls back in three weeks asking why the house still smells like smoke — and that callback is unpaid.

Structural rebuild means framing, drywall, electrical, and flooring — whatever got cut out or burned through. Price it like a normal construction estimate, because it is one.

Contents cleaning and pack-out covers furniture, clothing, and electronics — everything that has to leave the house to get cleaned or stored during the rebuild. Pack-out and storage alone can run $1,500 to $6,000 on a full-loss home, and it's the line item most new restoration contractors forget to quote until they're three weeks into a job doing it for free.

Mitigation and reconstruction are two different quotes

Same rule applies here as on water damage jobs: mitigation is the emergency phase, reconstruction is everything after, and bundling them into one invoice creates problems you don't need. Fire mitigation covers soot removal, odor treatment, and securing the structure. Reconstruction is the rebuild — new drywall, paint, flooring, trim.

There's a fire-specific wrinkle water losses don't have: firefighting water. Hoses don't care about your scope lines, and a fire that got a few hundred gallons dumped on it before it went out leaves you with a water damage job layered on top of the fire job. Let that water sit a day or two and you're also looking at drying protocols and, sometimes, the mold risk covered in our mold remediation pricing guide. Quote the water separately from the fire, the same way you'd quote mitigation separately from reconstruction. Three scopes if the job calls for it, not one number nobody — including you — can defend line by line.

Why the IICRC S700 standard is worth citing on your invoice

The IICRC S500 standard governs water losses. Fire and smoke restoration runs on S700, and it's worth knowing the difference exists even if you never crack open the document, because citing it tells an adjuster you're working from an industry standard instead of guessing.

S700 covers how to assess soot type, which cleaning method matches which residue, and how to document the process. The documentation piece matters most for getting paid. Photograph every surface before cleaning starts, note the soot type you identified and why, and log the deodorizing method you chose over the alternatives. An adjuster who sees that level of detail moves a claim faster than one staring at "smoke cleanup: $4,200" with nothing behind it.

A worked example: one-room kitchen fire, 300 sq ft affected

Grease fire, protein smoke, contained to the kitchen and an adjacent hallway before the fire department arrived. No structural fire damage, but heavy odor penetration into the cabinets and a few hundred gallons of firefighting water on the floor.

1. Soot and surface cleaning, protein residue protocol: 300 sq ft x $6.50/sq ft = $1,950
2. Odor and HVAC treatment, thermal fogging plus duct cleaning since odor traveled through the first floor: $1,400
3. Water extraction and drying from firefighting water, Category 1, caught same day: 300 sq ft x $3.25/sq ft = $975
4. Cabinet refinishing, grease penetration too deep for standard cleaning: $2,200
5. Contents cleaning, kitchenware and nearby textiles: $650

Total: roughly $7,175. Swap the protein fire for a dry-smoke fire of the same size with no firefighting water involved, and that number drops closer to $3,000 — same square footage, less than half the price, because soot type and water did almost all the work of setting the final figure.

Fire and smoke damage restoration FAQ

What's the difference between fire mitigation and fire damage restoration?

Mitigation is the emergency response — soot removal, odor treatment, securing the structure against further damage. Restoration, or reconstruction, is the rebuild: new drywall, paint, flooring, whatever got cut out. Insurers bill them under different coverage lines, so quote them separately.

Does homeowners insurance cover smoke damage even without visible fire damage?

Usually, yes, if the smoke came from a covered event like a kitchen fire or a neighboring unit's fire. Smoke and odor damage without structural fire damage is still a covered peril under most standard homeowner policies — just document the odor source and treatment method clearly on the invoice.

How long does a typical fire restoration job take?

Light smoke and odor jobs run 3 to 7 days. Moderate jobs with partial demo and rebuild run 2 to 4 weeks. A full structural loss with framing, electrical, and complete rebuild can run 3 to 6 months, depending on permit timelines and how much of the house has to come down.

Why does a small kitchen fire sometimes cost more than a bigger fire in a living room?

Protein soot from cooking fires is harder and more expensive to clean than dry or wet smoke from most other sources, and kitchens hold a lot of porous, grease-absorbing surfaces — cabinets, countertops near the stove — that need deeper treatment. Size isn't the driver here. Soot type is.

Do I need special certification to bid fire restoration jobs?

Not legally in most states, but IICRC fire and smoke restoration certification gets you onto insurer preferred-vendor lists, which is where most fire restoration leads actually come from. It's a smaller investment than the water or mold certifications and worth it if you're taking these jobs regularly.

Should I quote firefighting water damage separately from the fire damage?

Yes. Treat the water the fire department used exactly like any other water loss — its own line, priced by category and class — rather than folding it into the fire cleanup rate. Adjusters expect to see it broken out, and it protects you if the water sat long enough to need a different scope than the fire portion did.

The bottom line

Fire restoration pricing isn't about the square footage of the room that burned. It's about what burned, how long the smoke had to settle, and whether water from the hoses turned a one-scope job into two or three. Get those three answers on the first walkthrough and the price almost writes itself.

Once the scope is split out — mitigation, water if there is any, reconstruction, contents — turning it into a quote the client can actually read shouldn't take the rest of your afternoon. PRISM takes your walkthrough notes and turns them into an itemized quote in minutes, scoped the way adjusters expect to see it. Check pricing if you want to see it next to what you're paying now.