Wayfinding Signs

Wayfinding signage directs people around your site, helps keep corridors safe and accessible to all, manages crowd control and considers the user experience of a location, as well as reinforcing your brand and values.

It’s easy to think of wayfinding and directional signage as the same thing, they both point you in the right direction, however, there is a significant difference between the two. Custom wayfinding signs and solutions consider the whole site's layout, helping staff, visitors and guests navigate the site with ease. Directional signage on the other hand is more immediate and acts as a component of the overall wayfinding solution.

Consider a hospital environment where the individuals using the facility are potentially experiencing a heightened sense of emotions. Whether they’re a patient trying to access help, a staff member providing care to a patient, or an anxious relative trying to reach a loved one, without a cohesive set of wayfinding signs, that help them to navigate a site with ease, their experience could be made much worse if they can’t easily find their way.

In manufacturing operations, many facilities operate a lean infrastructure which helps to optimise production. Their wayfinding signage is imperative to help things like raw materials reach their destinations with limited hold-ups. Clear wayfinding solutions help get people where they need to go in a timely manner.

In retail, wayfinding signs help customers to have a great overall experience, allowing them to navigate a facility, and locate the item, shop or restaurant on their own. Clear wayfinding signs ensure they have a positive experience. This experience could impact their decision to return and potentially, the opinion they may share in online reviews, as well as with their friends, family and acquaintances.

Whatever industry a business operates in, wayfinding signage helps to create safe and accessible environment that helps assist in delivering the service the business sets out to, find out more here:

What are the Benefits of Wayfinding Signs?

Wayfinding signage is important and offers huge benefits to businesses of all sizes, in virtually any industry. Comprehensive wayfinding signs can be positioned some distance from the business and help guide guests to your entrance more easily, helping you to make the right impression straight away! The use of wayfinding signs can continue throughout the footprint of your site to help you achieve your business objectives.

Custom-designed wayfinding signs also do so much more than provide enhanced navigation! Wayfinding signs can take on accessibility features such as contrast text to help readability. They can also help to develop and reinforce the presence of your branding, within your facility. Taking elements of your brand, such as logos, colour schemes and motifs and adding them to the design is a great application to weave into your wayfinding solution.

Providing comprehensive wayfinding signage can also help inform site users of your safety procedures and assist with making your facility accessible to all and help keep your location fully compliant with the Equality Act (2010). Another benefit of wayfinding solutions is crowd management, if there are a large number of people using your corridors, such as in schools, keeping people moving in the right direction helps to reduce congestion and promotes safety.

What Types of Wayfinding Signs do we Offer?

There is no ‘one size fits all’ wayfinding system! Your requirements, facility, location and budget will determine the types of signage we recommend to create your custom wayfinding solution.

Typical wayfinding solutions could include:

• Totems or Monolith Signs, situated at the entrance to your car park direct the way to key points of your site, such as receptions or loading bays.

• Exterior Building Signs act as identification signs, they could show your business name and logo or highlight destinations.

• Directories and Plaques could be positioned by stairwells or lift banks to provide information about the different levels of your building, such as floor numbers. Specifically in multi-occupied residential buildings, these types of signs are required to comply with the Fire-Safety Regulation 2023, however, we believe these types of signs work well in most industry settings.

• Signposts are a great way to point customers in many directions utilising a small space footprint.

• Wall Graphics are a great way to share wayfinding information using available space in your facility

• Floor Graphics can guide visitors to key locations, creating opportunities for sharing information and promoting themes.

• Banners and High-Level Signs are great options for things like exhibition events or for guiding guests around your corridors.

• Door Identification including braille and tactile features is often the final piece of the puzzle, these signs are affixed to doors that identify the end destination.

FASTSIGNS has almost 40 years of experience creating wayfinding signage solutions for our customers, which are all treated as individual projects, helping to create wayfinding solutions that are fit for purpose.

Wayfinding Sign Installation & Maintenance

Our team of signage experts and installers will work to install signage in sequence, helping to ensure that the signage installed is fit for purpose, comprehensive and achieves its end goal of effectively helping guests, staff, customers and visitors navigate your space with little to no assistance. In terms of maintenance, our signage expert will recommend a programme of maintenance depending on the types of signage installed. They can also be on hand to make updates to your signage requirements should you choose to make changes to your current layout at a later date.

Client Testimonials & Case Studies

FASTSIGNS helped Manchester Metropolitan University to install a clear wayfinding solution across seven sites on their campus. 900 signs were installed in total, find out more here: https://www.fastsigns.co.uk/case-studies/education/manchester-metropolitan-university/

The Grammar School at Leeds has vast sporting facilities, which are often used for external tournaments, with many visitors finding the site a challenge to navigate, FASTSIGNS provided a customer wayfinding solution to solve their problem: https://www.fastsigns.co.uk/case-studies/education/the-grammar-school-at-leeds/

Having taken over the veterinary practice the team needed to make the site more visible from the road, FASTSIGNS helped them achieve their objective with their wayfinding signage: https://www.fastsigns.co.uk/case-studies/health-services/station-house-vets/.

Wayfinding Signage FAQs

• What is Wayfinding Signage?

Wayfinding signage and solutions consider the navigation of a whole site. The component wayfinding signs are designed to work together to help ensure that sites such as large offices, warehouses, manufacturing facilities, retail sites, and leisure venues are easy to navigate for users, visitors, customers and staff.

• How does wayfinding signage differ from directional signage?

Wayfinding signage considers the whole site’s wayfinding needs and can include exterior signage such as building signs and car parking navigation as well as interior directories, and door identification plaques. Directional signage is a part of the wayfinding signage solution but focuses more so on the actual information included on the sign, such as directional arrows.

• Why should I opt for custom wayfinding signs?

Wayfinding signage helps your facility become easy to use for your staff, customers and visitors. By ensuring your wayfinding solution is fit for purpose, you can boost the opportunity for customers to have a positive experience, as well as ensure that your operations remain on time and effective. Clear wayfinding helps reduce stress in your environment as well as create opportunities for positioning more branding within your building.

• Can I customise the material and design of the wayfinding signs?

Yes. Each wayfinding signage solution is built to each customer's individual specification and is unique. Depending on how long you need the signage for, your budget, what your overall objectives are and the opportunities and space for signage within your building will determine the types of materials and designs that are recommended for you, by our signage experts.

• How durable are Fastsigns wayfinding signs?

Depending on the types of materials used, you can expect the wayfinding hardware to last well over ten years or more, however, if you ever have a need to change the layout of your business, your wayfinding system can become out of date. If this is the case, our signage experts can recommend solutions that allow you some flexibility for change.

• What is the process for ordering custom wayfinding signs?

Our signage experts will visit your site to conduct a survey and understand exactly what you’re trying to achieve with your wayfinding signage. They will determine exactly where signage needs to be positioned and review your current wayfinding solutions to assess the durability of current fixtures and fittings. They will then work with our team of designers to create visuals for your approval and provide a detailed quotation. Once approved by you, we will produce the signage and organise the installation phase, which they will also project manage to ensure the final solution is 100% correct and effective for your facility.

• What kind of support do you provide for installation and maintenance?

FASTSIGNS provide a complete service. From concept to installation, you work with a dedicated sign expert who helps you deliver your wayfinding signage solution for your business. They will project manage a skilled team of installers, who will be on-site with you for the required number of days, to install your wayfinding signs. Depending on the materials used in your wayfinding solutions, your dedicated signage expert will make recommendations for the correct maintenance of the signs and potentially schedule a maintenance review with you.

• How long does it take to manufacture and deliver custom wayfinding signs?

This really depends on the type of signage required, the materials used and the number of signs required. As a rough guideline, we would expect that from your first meeting to installation to take around four weeks, however, this could be longer if elements of your solution require fabrication. Your signage experts will provide you with a more accurate time frame based on your individual needs.

If you would like to speak with one of our signage experts about installing a comprehensive and custom wayfinding signage solution in your business, click here to request a quote or visit our wayfinding product page for more information on the types of signs we can provide.