With the increase of the service life of the curtain wall of existing buildings and the impact of the harsh environment, China, as the world's first curtain wall producer and user country, is frequently harmed by accidents such as curtain wall falling off. This study first reviews the key failure types and influencing factors of curtain walls of existing buildings, and analyzes the safety status of existing curtain walls and the risk of accidents such as curtain wall falling off. Subsequently, this study summarizes traditional curtain wall safety detection methods such as visual method and pulling method, and finds that the existing technical means have the characteristics of low accuracy, poor timeliness or high cost, and it is difficult to cope with the rapidly increasing demand for curtain wall safety status evaluation. It is concluded that a new type of detection method is urgently needed in the field of curtain wall safety detection to change this situation. Finally, based on the application of laser vibration measurement in curtain wall inspection, it is concluded that the non-contact laser vibration detection method formed by the relationship between the dynamic characteristic attributes of the existing building curtain wall and its safety has more application prospects in terms of accuracy, timeliness and cost than the existing technical means. Non-contact non-destructive testing methods are the development direction of curtain wall safety testing in the future. Based on the rapid development of sensing technology, this study provides guidance and direction for the future realization of comprehensive and refined supervision of building curtain walls.