What is involved in signage and wayfinding on a public building?

Signage looks like the last item on a programme and it carries more compliance than most of the trades before it.

Two categories that get conflated

**Statutory signage.** Exit signs, fire equipment signage, accessible facility identification, braille and tactile signs at doors, evacuation diagrams, electrical and plant room signage. Content, size, height, contrast and position are all specified by requirement rather than by preference.

**Wayfinding and identification.** Directional signage, room numbering, departmental identification, the building's own naming. This is where design judgment applies.

Both end up on the same wall and they are procured and installed together, which is why the compliance set has to be resolved first and the design worked around it.

Braille and tactile signage

The requirements are specific: the characters, the braille, the luminance contrast against the background, the height above floor level, and the position relative to the door on the handle side.

Get any of those wrong and the sign is non-compliant even though it reads correctly to a sighted person. It is one of the more common defects found at final inspection, and it is entirely avoidable by checking before ordering rather than after installing.

Contrast is a measurable requirement

Luminance contrast between the characters and the background, and between the sign and the surface it is mounted on, is a numerical requirement rather than a visual judgment.

A dark grey sign on a mid grey wall can look elegant and fail. Confirming the values before manufacture avoids replacing a whole set.

Wayfinding that works

A wayfinding system fails in predictable ways.

**Decision points without signage.** The place people need direction is the junction, not the corridor.

**Inconsistent naming.** A space called one thing on the sign, another on the floor plan and a third by the staff who work there.

**Too much information on one sign,** which is unreadable at walking pace.

**No confirmation.** People need to be told they have arrived, not only which way to go.

The fix is to walk the routes as an unfamiliar visitor before the signs are ordered, which is quicker than it sounds and catches most of it.

Installation in an occupied building

Signage installation is low impact and it is not no impact. Drilling into walls, working at height in corridors, and access to doors that are in use.

It is programmed like any other trade in an occupied building: out of hours where the corridor is busy, and coordinated so a door is not out of use during a period the space is needed. The same discipline applies as in any [live environment](/answers/construction-in-live-environments).

Coordination with the building

Fixing into a fire door, into a fire-rated wall or into a waterproofed surface all have consequences, and none of them are obvious to a signage installer working from a schedule.

Monument coordinates signage with the trades that own those elements, so a sign does not compromise a rating that the rest of the project spent money achieving.

Delivery

Monument delivers signage packages on education, health and public facility projects as part of the fit-out rather than as a separate late scope, which is what keeps the compliance set from arriving after the final inspection.