Safety and Wayfinding Signage: What Buildings Need

Safety and wayfinding signage is the part of a signage scheme nobody enjoys buying and everybody notices when it is wrong. If you manage a building, a school, a care home or an office, this is the practical version.

The two jobs signage does inside a building

Safety signage warns, prohibits, instructs and marks escape routes. Wayfinding gets people from the front door to where they are going without asking anybody. They are usually specified together because they compete for the same wall space.

Safety signage in outline

UK safety signs follow a standard colour and shape system so they can be understood at a glance: green for escape routes and safe conditions, red for fire equipment and prohibition, yellow for warning, blue for mandatory instructions. Fire exit signage, fire equipment identification and escape route marking are the categories most buildings need, and the specifics depend on your fire risk assessment. Your responsible person or fire risk assessor determines what is required, we manufacture and install to that specification.

Wayfinding, the parts to plan

• Exterior identification and entrance signage
• Site and floor plans at entry points
• Primary directional signs at each decision point
• Floor and zone identification in stairwells and lift lobbies
• Room, door and desk identification
• Reassurance signs on long routes so people know they are still right

Accessibility

Good practice covers far more than the minimum. Strong contrast between text and background, sans serif typefaces at a size matched to the reading distance, tactile and Braille door signs at a consistent height, and avoiding glossy finishes that glare under strip lighting. A wayfinding scheme that works for a partially sighted visitor works better for everybody.

Planning a scheme

Walk the building as a first time visitor and note every point where you had to guess. Those are your decision points and they are where signs go. Keep the naming consistent, the same room must not be Meeting Room 2 on one sign and the Boardroom on another, and that single mistake causes more confusion than missing signs do.

Materials for interiors

Acrylic, aluminium and printed panels are standard. Choose wipe clean surfaces in healthcare and education, and consider modular systems with changeable inserts anywhere staff or room names change often, because that avoids reordering a whole sign to change one name.

Full schemes, surveyed and installed

We produce complete wayfinding and safety signage schemes for schools, councils, hotels, care providers and commercial buildings, designed, manufactured and installed by our own team nationwide. Call 0800 454 613 for a free survey.