4 Ways to Use Lighting To Complement Your Exterior Signage
Your exterior signage represents your business and your brand. The colors you choose and the size and style of your logo let customers know what you offer and who you are.
You can make those details even more eye-catching with an added element: lighting.
Using lighting for your exterior signage can help both the big and small details of your signage stand out, catch attention, and send signals to customers. Here are a few benefits of using lighting on your exterior signs and how you can use it to improve your new or existing signage.
The Benefits of Using Lighting On Exterior Signage
To give you an idea of why it’s a good idea to use illuminated signage and lighting on your exterior signs, consider these benefits. You can:
- Stand out from competitors. Lighting gives you more options to do something creative with your signage branding. Your design options are more flexible, and you can add additional elements to make your signage look different from competitors or other nearby businesses
- Capture attention. Lit signs demand more attention than signage with no lighting elements. Lighting helps your sign stand out and be more visible, especially at night and from far distances.
- Add a modern appeal. You can adjust the lighting based on current trends and attract customers with an updated design or look.
- Remain energy-efficient. You don’t need to add dozens of lights to your signage. A few strategically-placed energy-efficient exterior LED lights can illuminate your whole sign and even your whole building.
- Save money. Plus, LED lights keep your electric bills low, no matter how brightly your lights shine. Don’t worry about increasing your electric bills when you choose exterior signage with LED lighting.
As you can see, any business can benefit from outdoor lighting, whether you are trying to get noticed or simply modernize your look.
4 Ways to Use Lighting on Exterior Signage
Lighting is a great element of custom exterior signage because it is incredibly flexible. If you have a vision for your brand, the right lighting can make it happen. Here are four popular ways that customers use lighting for their signage.
1. Illuminate Signs for Greater Visibility
Many businesses want to get noticed at night, either to attract customers when they are open or to reinforce their brand when they are closed. Illuminated signs can also help your brand get noticed when it is rainy or foggy out.
There are multiple different ways to illuminate your exterior signage. You can backlight your sign to make the lettering stand out, or you can uplight or downlight it – showing light from below or from up above. The goal is to make your signage look modern and attractive to customers that walk or drive past.
2. Add Colors to Compliment Your Brand
You can use lighting as a way to complement the existing colors for your brand. For example, if you choose neutral signage (like a black sign contrasting a tan building), then you can use lighting to add blue, green, white, or any other color to highlight your business.
Lighting creates a different effect than standard signage. The glow of LED lights creates energy and emotion for your brand. This is why many nightclubs and bars rely on neon lighting – they want to make customers feel excited about their business.
Regardless of the industry you operate in, exterior lighting can make your brand seem more appealing than simply relying on a static sign with your brand colors or using lighting with a single-color setup.
3. Change Colors for Different Events
Not only can you add different colors to reflect your brand, but you can also set up your lighting so it changes to any colors that suit your needs. For example, the Empire State Building changes its lights frequently and even has a calendar on its website explaining what lights are used and why. In March, it was green for St. Patrick’s Day.
Closer to home, the Fox 13 Tampa Skytower lights up for holidays, sporting events, and other symbolic reasons. A Creative Sign Designs project, we used LED uplighting to reach the top of the 150-foot tall tower. This was an affordable way to draw attention to the Fox 13 brand and make the Skytower a community landmark in the area.
4. Add Other Lighting Elements
Exterior lighting isn’t always limited to signage. There are other ways to use lighting solutions outside of your business to draw attention to your building and attract customers to your brand.
Set up display lights along sides of buildings. This showcases the building’s prominence, cleanliness, and safety. Not only can customers see the building from far away, but they will feel comfortable driving up to it.
Use LED lights to brighten parking lots. This has the same goal as lighting up the side of your building. Bright lighting in a parking lot conveys safety for your customers and lets people know that you are open.
When we worked with Gator Ford, we took down their 214 fluorescent pole fixtures and replaced them with 107 LED replacements. This still made their parking lot twice as bright as before and easily noticeable for drivers on I-4. Plus, switching to LED lights saved Gator Ford 10% each month on energy costs.
Guide customers down pathways and through your business with photoluminescent egress lighting. This is an important aspect of wayfinding. You create a better experience with fewer lost customers and minimal cost to your business.
Improve the Lighting for Your Exterior Signage
These are just a few ideas for using lighting for your exterior signage, but they come with infinite possibilities for placement, colors, and use. Consider how you interact with lighting as you drive around at night. What businesses catch your eye and why? You may realize that exterior lighting plays a bigger role in your decisions than you initially thought.
If you are interested in using lighting for your exterior signage, contact the specialists at Creative Sign Designs today.
