To study the effect of damping on the seismic demands of nonstructural elements 113 actual seismic records obtained from instrumented buildings in the USA were selected. The study concluded that: (a) the use of damping modification factors evaluated based on ground level excitations are not suitable for correcting the nonstructural component spectral accelerations demands and (b) the component damping effect on the imposed to the nonstructural elements floor spectral demands is highly dependent on the proximity of their natural period to that of the building. On account of the above and a detailed statistical analysis two equations are proposed for estimating the mean and coefficient of variation of the component damping modification factors.