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A fire escape is also sometimes known as an escape door or an emergency exit. While escape doors and similar emergency exits have a number of potential uses in a variety of emergency situations, they are designed primarily for use in the case of fire.
How emergency exits are designed depends greatly on the type of building in question, with low standing buildings offering completely different solutions to large apartment blocks and skyscrapers. While the term emergency exit is often used to describe fire escapes in multi-story buildings, escape door devices (Fluchtwegsicherung) are often used to describe domestic escape doors in smaller residential houses.

In many jurisdictions around the world there are a number of rules and regulations surrounding the use of escape doors, with building regulations defining how this style of emergency exit is able to be designed and used. An escape door is integral to building safety in many situations, as a way to quickly exit from a building in the case of fire and other emergencies. However, while fire escapes in multi story buildings may consist of a complex mixture of horizontal platforms and stairways, escape doors in domestic houses may be much more simple in their design. In order to be effective, an escape door simply has to provide easy access to the outside environment, and act as an alternative to the main entry and exit doors in a building.

Most builders are able to quickly install escape doors and similar emergency exits in buildings, through using existing walls and parts of a building. In commercial buildings, it is even more important to have regulated emergency exits installed, in locations that can be easily accessed by anyone who is inside the building. Along with the doors themselves, there are also a number of escape door devices and accessories that are available for sale, such as automated exit controllers, emergency access locks, and point of entry systems. A well defined escape door or emergency exit is integral to any building, and needs to be installed to meet building regulations in many situations.