Abstract | Nonstructural components often represent the largest portion of the investment in new commercial buildings, typically accounting for 70 to 85% of the total construction cost. Furthermore, damage to nonstructural components can lead not only to serious injuries and even casualties, but can lead to partial or total temporary loss of use of the building and to large economic losses. Nonstructural components are often subjected to seismic motions that are completely different both in amplitude and in frequency content than ground motions. Floor motions are characterized by being narrowband motions that produce extremely large accelerations on nonstructural elements whose frequencies of vibration coincide with those of one of the modal frequencies of the building in which they are mounted. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new approach in which bracing elements of nonstructural elements are designed and detailed to work as fuses that limit forces acting not only in the nonstructural elements but also those acting on the attachments to the structure and on the attachment(s) to the nonstructural element. It is shown that the proposed approach not only results in reductions in design forces but can also result in important reductions in deformation demands, especially for components that are tuned to modal periods of the building in which they are mounted on.