Superficial burns are those which involve the epidermal skin layer and partial thickness burns involve deeper damage to structures such as blood vessels and nerves. There are many dressing materials available to treat these burns but none has strong evidence to support their use. Evidence from poor quality, small trials, suggests that superficial and partial thickness burns heal more quickly with silicon‐coated nylon, silver containing dressings and biosynthetic dressings than with silver sulphadiazine cream. Burns treated with hydrogel dressings healed more quickly than those treated with usual care.