SUMMARY Smoke deposition patterns are a potentially rich source of information concerning the behavior of a fire. Clean burn patterns are smoke‐free areas where smoke deposits have been oxidized away. In order to predict the formation of clean burn patterns, smoke oxidation kinetics are required. Smoke oxidation kinetics were studied for smokes from acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, polymethylmethacrylate, polypropylene, and gasoline. The fuels were burned below a hood, and smoke samples were collected from the hot gas layer and from the wall surfaces. The smokes from various polymers and gasoline were found to contain no measurable volatile organic chemicals. The kinetics of the smokes from the polymers and gasoline were found to be satisfactorily modeled as first order in both smoke and oxygen with the same kinetic constants for all fuels tested. The activation energy was calculated to be 211 kJ/mol, and the pre‐exponential factor was found to be 4.7 × 1010/s. These kinetic parameters provide a basis for modeling clean burn pattern generation. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.