Storefront and Signage Illumination

What is storefront and signage illumination?

Storefront and Signage Illumination is one of the commercial & architectural lighting services we install across New Jersey. Storefront and signage lighting makes an entrance and its identification legible after dark, balancing the sign against the façade behind it so one does not wash out the other.

How do we install it?

The sign is lit to a level above its background rather than to maximum output, since legibility comes from contrast and not from brightness.

Fixtures are positioned so their own housings do not cast shadows across the lettering they are meant to reveal.

Entrance lighting is kept distinct from sign lighting, so a customer can find the door without staring into the sign's own sources.

Color temperature is matched to the sign's internal illumination where it has any, which keeps a lit face and a lit surround reading as one object.

Sign fixtures aim so the top of the sign catches the same level of light as the bottom, since a hot lower edge and a dim upper edge make the sign read as sagging.

Fixtures for illuminated awnings are chosen against the fabric transmission, because a beam that suits vinyl overpowers acrylic panels of the same nominal color.

Sign lighting is fed from the tenant panel rather than from house circuits, so a landlord shutdown does not dark the tenant identity overnight.

Face lenses on sign floods are cleaned at the same interval as the sign itself, as a dust film in front of a source drops legibility more than a dim source would.

What does a bad install look like?

Aiming floodlights at the sign face from directly below. It glares at approaching drivers and puts the top third of the lettering in its own shadow.

A single high-mounted floodlight aimed down at a channel-letter sign. The letters cast shadow onto the raceway below, and the sign reads as three-quarters lit from the road.

Sign lighting left on a house-side dusk-to-dawn photocell. The sign switches with the parking lot at first light, and drivers pass a dark storefront during the morning commute.