IBHS Wildfire Prepared Home Certification in Colorado

What the Wildfire Prepared Home program is

IBHS — the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety — is an independent nonprofit research organization funded by the insurance industry. At its research center in South Carolina, scientists recreate real wildfire conditions to study how homes actually ignite. Wildfire Prepared Home™, established in 2022, turns that research into a defined set of actions a homeowner can complete and have independently verified.

The program exists because most homes don't burn from a wall of flame. They ignite from wind-blown embers that travel more than a mile ahead of the fire and collect in vents, gutters, mulch beds, against fences and foundations, and on decks. The standard is built as a system: because wildfire exploits the weakest link, every required action for your level must be complete before a designation is issued. There is no partial credit.

In June 2025, IBHS released the first update to the Wildfire Prepared Home Technical Standard, clarifying designation levels and eligibility, adding guidance for Red Flag Warnings and extended absences, and revising the homeowner checklist. In April 2026 the program expanded from four states to fourteen, Colorado among them.

The two levels of certification

There are two designation levels. IBHS is currently renaming them — Base is becoming Essential and Plus is becoming Enhanced — but the technical requirements are not changing, only the labels. You'll see both names in circulation for a while.

Plus is cumulative, not an alternative — a home must meet every Base requirement first, then complete the additional Plus items. For most homes already standing, Base is the realistic target, and it captures the mitigation that research shows matters most. Download the IBHS How-To Prepare My Home Checklist (PDF) for the full requirements at both levels.

Why certification matters for your insurance

Colorado's House Bill 25-1182 took effect July 1, 2026, and it changed the relationship between mitigation work and what you pay. Any insurer using a wildfire risk model, catastrophe model, or scoring method to underwrite or price your policy must now:

• Account for your mitigation, or discount for it. Insurers must incorporate property-specific and community-level mitigation into their models. If they don't, they're required to provide discounts to policyholders who can demonstrate the work.
• Show you your wildfire risk score. You're entitled to an annual written notice stating your score, any other risk classification used, and the mitigation discounts available to you.
• Publish what savings are available. Insurers must post premium savings information and their score appeal process on their website.
• Let you appeal. You can dispute a wildfire risk score directly with the insurer.

This is where a designation earns its keep. The law rewards mitigation you can demonstrate, and a Wildfire Prepared Home certificate is third-party verified evidence rather than a homeowner's own description of the work. IBHS partners with State Farm, USAA, Farmers, Mercury, CSAA and others, and advises homeowners to share the certificate with their agent to explore available incentives.

IBHS or Wildfire Partners? If you're in Boulder County, read this first

Colorado has a second certification that underwriters recognize: Wildfire Partners, run by Boulder County. If you're in its service area, it's usually the better first move — and for many homeowners, the cheaper one. The two programs aren't mutually exclusive, and most of the physical work overlaps.

The practical difference is who tells you what to do. Wildfire Partners sends a specialist who assesses your property and hands you a tailored required-work list. IBHS publishes a fixed standard and verifies whether you met it — the evaluator documents conditions and nothing more. That makes the IBHS route less forgiving if you go in without knowing where your home stands, which is the gap our free assessment fills.

Note that Wildfire Partners requires homeowners to apply directly; contractors can't apply on your behalf. We're happy to do the mitigation work either program calls for.

The certification process, step by step

Wildfire Prepared Home is an owner-driven program. IBHS doesn't inspect your home to tell you what to fix — it verifies that you already did. That makes the preparation phase the part that decides whether you pass.

1. Confirm eligibility and pick a level. Your home must be on a permanent foundation, three stories or fewer, and compliant with applicable state and local WUI building codes. Single-family detached, modular, and post-July-1994 HUD-code manufactured homes qualify. Homes under active construction do not.
2. Complete every required mitigation action. Work the IBHS checklist from the ground up: clear the first five feet to noncombustible materials, establish 30 feet of defensible space, then address the roof, gutters, vents, wall bases, and decks. This is the longest phase and the one that determines the outcome.
3. Apply through the IBHS portal. Create an account, start the home application, and pay the $125 non-refundable fee. You can add your insurance agent as a secondary contact so they receive status updates directly. Paying the fee does not guarantee a designation.
4. Submit eligibility photos. Upload clear photos of all four sides of the home, the 0–5 ft noncombustible zone, and key features like decks, pergolas, hot tubs, and propane tanks. Review typically takes 2–5 business days. If the audit team issues a change request, you have 60 days to respond before the application closes.
5. Pass the in-person evaluation. An independent third-party evaluator visits to verify materials and document completed work, usually 1–3 weeks after eligibility approval. Evaluators document conditions only — they don't give mitigation advice or decide whether you qualify. Where no evaluator is available locally, an approved self-inspection app may be used at no extra charge.
6. Receive the designation and maintain it. IBHS issues a certificate valid for three years. You'll submit updated photos at the one- and two-year anniversaries to confirm the mitigation is still in place. Most complete applications move through the full process in several weeks.

How Blaze Blocker helps you get there

We're not an IBHS evaluator, and no contractor can issue your designation — that independence is the point of the program. What we do is the work that gets a home to the standard, and the documentation that makes the application straightforward.

Our free on-site assessment is the practical starting point. We walk the property against the IBHS checklist, identify exactly which requirements your home already meets and which it doesn't, and hand you a prioritized, itemized plan — so you know the real scope and cost before you pay an application fee. We also document the completed work, which is what your insurer will want under HB 25-1182 and what makes your photo submission go smoothly. Not sure where to start? Check your wildfire risk with our six-point self-check first.

One note on sequencing: apply after the work is done. The most common reason applications stall is a change request on something that could have been caught before submission.

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