Sign buying guide

A quick guide to our safety sign products and how to choose which sign is right for you...

Our Range of Products:

With the largest choice of safety signs available to purchase online in the UK – we could be accused of offering too many signs! This site with its powerful filter navigation is an extension of this huge choice, enabling you to find exactly the right sign for you - quickly and easily from more than 30,000 standard safety signs which we offer.

To make this easier for you, our products have been divided into 3 ranges:

• Most Popular - if you're looking to quickly find a common sign and you're happy with the same type that everyone else has - this is the range for you.
• Standard - this one's for you if too much choice is a bit overwhelming and what you need is a 'normal' safety sign. There's still plenty of choice - and this is what is shown by default.
• Max Choice - if you're a serious sign buyer who wants to see it all, and are able to decide exactly which sign is right for you.

To find the right sign for you...

You can either type in what you're looking for in plain language to the search, or you can refine the list of products by things which might be important to you using the filters. For example if you're looking for a "small no smoking sticker",  you can either just put this into the search, or you can pick "smoking" from the Categories filter, "small" from the Size filter and "self-adhesive vinyl" from the material filter - both would show the same products.

Why use Safety Signs:

Safety signage is an important aspect of every organisation or business's management of Health & Safety in the workplace. Safety signs are not a substitute for safe working practices – but they can help further reduce the risks once all other practical steps have been taken. In order to make every UK safety sign universally understood there are design rules which manufacturers have to follow.

Since no one explains these 'rules' many people think that a safety sign must be a certain size or type of material – and so they put up with a limited choice of products from their supplier. That's not how it works at safetysignsupplies – whilst there are minimum size limits in some cases – safety signs from safetysignsupplies are available in every practical size and material option. This means that you can choose the sign that best fits YOUR application – and not be restricted to ones that suit the manufacturer, so that the number of stocked items is limited.

A practical example is fire exit signs, there are 3 main sizes to choose from, depending on the installation. The main factor to be considered is the viewing distance of the sign

• up to 30m, large (L62 = 600x200mm)

• up to 22m, medium (L41 = 450x150mm)

• up to 13m, small (L31 = 300x100mm)

Where most manufacturers will offer some of these sizes in some materials – safetysignsupplies offers all 3 fire exit sign design types (BS5499, 92/58 EEC & NHS HTM65) in all 8 arrow directions with 12 material choices – that’s 864 types of fire exit signs alone. This means if you run a restaurant and you only need the small (300x100mm)signs – but you'd like fire exit signs in a premium finish – you can use the brushed stainless steel, or metal effect versions. Equally if you've got a warehouse and you need the large fire exit signs (600x200mm) – and you want them to be photoluminescent fire exit signs (glow in the dark) – you can!

Safety sign design is regulated in the UK by BS5499, which specifies both the symbols and colours to be used for different types of signs. Red for prohibition signs, blue for mandatory signs, yellow for warning signs & green for safe condition signs. These specifications must be followed by the safety sign manufacturer – and the correct safety sign chosen to be clearly legible when installed, at a distance which makes sense in that situation. Whether the sign is 200x150 (A5) or 800x600mm (A1), landscape or portrait makes no difference to meeting the regulations – or to the effectiveness of the safety function it provides. The biggest possible choice just means that you can have the safety signs which make most sense for YOUR needs. So don't make your prestige office look like a building site with enormous safety signs which could be read from across the street but probably not from across the corridor, or equally your building site signs so small that no one pays attention to them...