The first formal description of the common redstart was by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Motacilla phoenicurus.

[3] The genus and species name phoenicurus is from Ancient Greek phoinix, "red", and -ouros -"tailed".

To the southeast, subspecies P. p. samamisicus, sometimes called ‘Ehrenberg’s Redstart’, is found from the Crimean Peninsula and Greece through Turkey, the Caucasus, the Middle East, and into Central Asia.

Among common European birds, only the Black Redstart (Phoenicurus ochrurus) has a similarly coloured tail.

[11][12] The male in summer has a slate-grey head and upperparts, except the rump and tail, which, like the flanks, underwing coverts and axillaries are orange-chestnut.

Common Redstarts prefer open mature birch, oak or, particularly in the north of the breeding range, conifer woodland with a high horizontal visibility and low amounts of shrub and understorey especially where the trees are old enough to have holes suitable for its nest.

[13] In Britain the Common Redstart occurs primarily in upland areas less affected by agricultural intensification.

[14] It is a summer visitor throughout most of Europe and western Asia (east to Lake Baikal), and also in northwest Africa in Morocco.

It winters in central Africa and Arabia, south of the Sahara Desert but north of the Equator, from Senegal east to Yemen.

Five or six light blue eggs are laid during May, with a second brood in midsummer in the south of the breeding range.

The main contact call in Central Europe is a rising, slightly dissylabilic huid.