Safety should be a top priority everywhere from local grocery stores to warehouses and job sites. Whether you are trying to keep your employees safe or warning customers and guests about dangers that lie ahead, safety signs are an essential element for any business and come in many forms.

Why are safety signs important?

Signs and safety go hand-in-hand. To keep a workplace and business injury-free, signs must be used for safety. Safety signs alert, inform, and direct visitors and customers to avoid hazards. Signs create awareness so that safety can be a highlighted. Consistent, well-designed signs throughout your business or facility will emphasize the importance of safety. What might seem logical to you, in terms of safety, may not always be apparent to a visitor or even an employee. Safety signs serve as a recurring visual so that everyone is educated and protected. Virtually every industry is required to post safety signs so that businesses can properly communicate essential messages. Invest in your customers’ safety with custom safety signs. You can maintain your brand identity throughout your business with custom safety signs that still meet requirements set forth by federal, state, and local agencies.  

What are the main types of safety signs?

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) establishes safety guidelines on a federal level. These specifications have been deemed effective in preventing injury and death. OSHA recognizes the following classifications of signs:  

• Warning
• Caution
• Danger
• Notice
• Safety instructions

These signs should be placed in common spaces where they will be highly visible and hard to miss. Some of the required OSHA signage includes:

• Fire exits
• No smoking
• High voltage
•  Low overhead
• Wet or slippery surfaces

What are the ways safety signs are used?

Signs must be relevant. If they are placed too far away from a hazardous situation, the signs could be ineffective. Proper warnings should be placed in close proximity to the area you want to protect. OSHA states that “the wording of any sign should be easily read and concise. The sign should contain sufficient information to be easily understood. The wording should make a positive, rather than negative suggestion and should be accurate in fact.”

Colors, shapes, and overall design matters, according to OSHA, and this reasoning makes sense. Colors can help visitors and employees easily recognize where and when to use caution, special equipment, and more. OSHA does instruct on when the colors red and yellow can be used. For example, red should be used to indicate fire, danger, and stop. Yellow, according to OSHA, should be used to mark caution in certain situations. These colors and their associations have become fairly universal – a bonus to using red and yellow in your safety signs. 

The organization also specifies how signs should be formatted or designed. For example, “All signs shall be furnished with rounded or blunt corners and shall be free from sharp edges, burrs, splinters, or other sharp projections. The ends or heads of bolts or other fastening devices shall be located in such a way that they do not constitute a hazard.”

If your business needs to update the safety signs throughout your facility, you can count on the local sign experts at Signarama to help you meet all the required safety sign regulations. Our sign experts are familiar with federal, state, and local requirements and are available to perform a safety sign audit of your business to help you avoid on-site accidents as well as fines. Contact your local Signarama today!