Wayfinding signs are the set of signs that get a person from the road to the right door without asking anyone. On a medical office, a school, a church, an industrial park or any campus with more than one entrance, the signs either work as a system or they do not work at all. Planning that system is mostly a routing exercise, and it happens before anybody picks a font.
I have watched projects get sent back at permit review and at ADA review for problems that were set months earlier, when someone drew a nice sign package without walking the site. Here is the order I work in.
Quick version: walk the routes first, list every decision point, then decide what each sign has to say. Letter height comes from the distance you are reading it at, not from the size of the panel. Get the ADA rules right on the interior door signs, because that is where projects fail review.
What a wayfinding system has to do
A wayfinding system answers three questions in order: am I in the right place, where do I go next, and what do I need to know when I get there. If any one of those goes unanswered at any point on the route, the person stops and looks around, which is the moment your front desk starts getting phone calls.
The mistake I see most is treating each sign as a separate purchase. One sign gets ordered because someone complained, then another one two years later in a different color, with a different name for the same door. Six signs later the set contradicts itself and people still get lost.
Walk the route before you design anything
Park where a first-time visitor would park and walk in. Then do it again from the far end of the lot, from the accessible spaces, and from the back entrance if staff and deliveries use one. Write down every place you had to make a choice, including the ones you made without thinking.
Do the same walk in the other direction, because leaving is a separate problem. People who cannot find the exit or their car end up back at the front desk. If you have a second building or a rear lot, walk between them too.
Every place you stopped or turned is a decision point, and every decision point either needs a sign or does not. That list of decision points is your plan. The rest of the work is deciding what each one says.
The four kinds of signs you will need
Almost every wayfinding package is built from four types. Knowing which type you are placing keeps the message short, because each type has one job.
| Type of sign | The job it does | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|
| Identification | Confirms the person arrived at the right place | At the road entrance, and on the building itself |
| Directional | Points to the next decision only | Every fork in a drive, a lot, a walkway or a hallway |
| Informational | Hours, entrance details, the accessible route | At the lot entrance and at the door |
| Regulatory | Parking rules, accessible spaces, safety notices | Exactly where the rule applies |
Directional signs are the ones people overload. A directional sign should carry the next decision and nothing else. Three or four destinations on a panel is about the limit before a driver stops reading it.
Letter height comes from viewing distance
Measure the distance a sign is actually read from before you pick a size. For signs read from a slow-moving car, a workable starting point is about one inch of capital letter height for every 25 feet of viewing distance. Then round up, because that rule assumes good contrast and a driver who is looking.
| Read from | Situation | Cap height to start with |
|---|---|---|
| 25 feet | Walking up to a door | 1 inch |
| 50 feet | Slow driving in a parking lot | 2 inches |
| 100 feet | Driving through a lot or a campus drive | 4 inches |
| 200 feet | Driving past at about 35 miles an hour | 8 inches |
This is where a package usually gets more expensive than expected. Bigger letters mean a bigger panel, a bigger post, and sometimes a bigger footing. Working it out at the planning stage is much cheaper than finding out after the signs are made that nobody can read them from the road.
Contrast does as much work as size. Light characters on a dark background, or dark on light, read from much further away than two mid-tone colors. Colors that look fine on a monitor often wash out in daylight, so check a printed sample outside.
The ADA rules that get projects sent back
Interior signs that name a permanent room or space have to meet the ADA standards, and this is where wayfinding packages fail review. The rules are specific and they are not negotiable at the counter.
- Signs naming a permanent room need raised characters and braille.
- They mount on the wall on the latch side of the door, not on the door itself, so the door can be open and the sign still readable.
- The lowest raised character sits at least 48 inches above the floor, and the highest sits no more than 60 inches above the floor.
- Raised character height is between 5/8 inch and 2 inches.
- Characters have to be sans serif, and not italic, script, oblique or highly decorative.
- Characters and their background both need a non-glare finish, with strong contrast between them.
- There has to be clear floor space in front of the sign so someone can stand and read it.
Directional and informational signs follow different rules from tactile room signs, which is the mix-up that causes most of the trouble. One placard trying to be both a room identification sign and a directional sign usually satisfies neither set of requirements.
Name every place once and never change it
Whatever a destination is called on the first sign at the road has to be exactly what it is called on the lot sign, the building sign and the door. If the road sign says Patient Parking and the lot sign says Visitor Parking, a first-time visitor assumes they are two different lots.
Pick one word for each kind of thing and hold it everywhere. Suite or Room, not both. Building B or the East Building, not both. Use the name people are told on the phone, not the name on the lease.
Write the whole list down before anything is ordered, with every sign and its exact wording on one sheet. That sheet is what you hand the sign shop, and it is what you check the proofs against.
Stake the locations before you order
Put a stake in the ground at every proposed sign location and then go drive the route. Sight lines look very different from a car than they do on a site plan. A sign that is perfectly placed on paper can sit behind a parked van, a hedge that fills out in June, or the pile of snow that lands there every winter.
Before anything gets dug, call 811 to have the underground utilities marked. Sign footings are deep enough to find things, and it is a free call.
This is also when the physical mounting gets settled. Some signs go on posts, some go on a wall, and some end up on a canopy or an entry structure that is already there. We build the patio enclosures and canopies on a lot of the same properties, which makes it easier to work out how a sign attaches to one without cutting into it. We handle the towns across Long Island the same way, including retractable pergolas central islip and retractable pergolas hauppauge, because sign codes and permit timelines differ from one to the next.
Bring us your site plan
Send a site plan or even a satellite screenshot with your entrances marked, and we will walk the routes with you and put together a sign schedule before anything gets priced. Our custom signs work is designed and built at our own shop, so a package stays consistent across every sign in it. Use the contact form on the site, or call us at (631) 502-3444, Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm.