Durham Region · business signage
Lawn sign installation for local business
Directional signs, promo signs, event signage, grand openings. We place signs that were printed anywhere, put them where the bylaw allows them to stand, rotate them when the bylaw says they have to move, and come back for them at the end.
You own the campaign. We own the ground.
Three places a business sign can legally stand
Not “anywhere there is grass.” Municipal sign bylaws are specific about what may sit on a road allowance, and a sign in the wrong category gets pulled without notice.
01
Property you control, or a partner's
Your own lot, or a nearby business that agrees to host a sign. This is the workhorse for most local campaigns — no permit conversation, no 72-hour clock, and you can leave it up for the season.
02
A boulevard category the bylaw already permits
Oshawa's sign bylaw lets specific temporary signs stand on a boulevard with no permit at all — home builder identification, real estate open house, and community event signs among them. Special event signage gets its own window, from 14 days before the event to 24 hours after.
03
A permit, where the zoning supports one
Sandwich boards on a boulevard and commercial mobile signs both run on permits in Oshawa rather than on a blanket prohibition. Whether one is available depends on the zone and the property.
If what you want does not fit one of the three, we will say so and suggest a placement that does. Getting your signs removed and billed back to you is not a service.
The 72-hour rule most businesses have never read
Oshawa's sign bylaw does not just say where a boulevard sign can stand. It says how long it can stand there: no sign on a boulevard may remain in its original location, or within 500 metres of that location, for more than 72 hours in any consecutive seven-day period.
Read that twice, because it changes what a sign campaign actually is. A sign planted on a Monday is in contravention by Thursday, and moving it 200 metres down the same road does not reset the clock. A compliant boulevard campaign is a rotating campaign — which is precisely the part most businesses cannot staff, and precisely what a crew that is already driving Durham every day can absorb.
A four-week run works out to roughly nine moves per sign, with a record of where each one has already been so it does not land back inside its own 500-metre exclusion. That is a scheduling problem, and scheduling is the business we are in.
Placement, rotation, retrieval
Placed to the measurements
A metre back from the curb, under the height limit, lower again near an intersection, never on the sidewalk. The bylaw is specific and the specifics are the job.
Rotated before the clock runs out
Where the 72-hour limit applies, we move the sign on a schedule instead of waiting for a bylaw officer to move it for us — and we track where it has already been.
Retrieved and stored
End of the campaign, the signs come back. We can hold them between runs so the same panels go out again next season instead of living in someone's garage.
Logged by address
Every placement recorded with an address and a photo, which is the only practical way to find forty signs again a month later.
The measurements we place to
Oshawa's boulevard standards, which are broadly consistent with what the Region requires on regional roads. Individual municipalities add their own restrictions on top.
- At least 1 m back from the curb, or 2 m from the travelled road where there is no curb
- No taller than 1.2 m and no wider than 0.8 m on a boulevard
- Nothing over 0.6 m tall within 20 m of an intersection
- Never on a sidewalk, median or traffic island
- Never blocking a driver's or pedestrian's view of anything
- Name, address and phone number of whoever is responsible, shown on the sign itself
The last one surprises people: a boulevard sign has to identify who put it there, with a name, address and phone number. An anonymous sign is a non-compliant sign no matter how well it is placed. The full rules, and how to build a campaign around them.
Private property placements
The simplest campaigns run entirely on private property — your own lot plus a handful of neighbouring businesses or supportive homeowners. No permit conversation, no rotation clock, and a sign can stay for the season.
The rules are not zero, though. Whitby's temporary sign bylaw requires private-property signs to sit at least a metre back from the municipal boulevard, and municipalities generally limit how many temporary signs one property can carry at once. We place to whichever municipality the property is in, and we get the occupant's consent on record before anything goes in the ground.
Where we place
Oshawa, Pickering, Ajax, Whitby, Clarington, Bowmanville, Newcastle, Courtice, Markham, Scarborough, and the surrounding townships listed on our service areas page. Rotation routes work best inside a defined trade area, so tell us the neighbourhoods you actually draw from rather than the whole Region.
Lawn sign rules guide
Where signs can go, for how long, and what gets them pulled.
Election signs
Campaign placement and the post-election removal sweep.
Sign printing
Coroplast printed in house, laminated, sized to your stakes.
Business lawn signs — FAQ
- Can I legally put my business sign on a Durham Region boulevard?
- Sometimes, and it depends on what kind of sign it is. Oshawa's bylaw permits specific temporary signs on a boulevard without a permit — home builder identification, real estate open house and community event signs among them — and handles sandwich boards and commercial mobile signs through permits instead. A general business advertising sign is not automatically in the permitted list. Tell us what the sign says and where you want it, and we will tell you whether it can stand there.
- What is the 72-hour rule for lawn signs?
- Under Oshawa's sign bylaw, a sign on a boulevard cannot stay in its original location — or within 500 m of it — for more than 72 hours in any seven-day period. A sign that stays put all month is in contravention from day four onward, so a compliant campaign is a rotating one.
- Do you supply the signs or just install them?
- Either. We place signs printed anywhere, and most clients already have theirs. If you need them produced we print coroplast in house and can quote printing, placement and retrieval as one job.
- How many signs makes sense for a local campaign?
- Enough to cover the routes your customers actually drive, with spares for the ones that get damaged. Because boulevard placements have to move, plan around a set of locations rather than a set of signs. Call us with your trade area and we will map it out.
- How much does lawn sign installation cost?
- It is quoted per campaign. Sign count, how spread out the locations are, how many rotations you want, and whether we are storing the signs between runs all move the number. There is no per-sign list price because a tight cluster and a Region-wide spread are not the same job.
- What happens if the municipality removes one of my signs?
- Signs on a road allowance in contravention of the bylaw can be removed without notice, and municipalities charge to release them — Oshawa's general sign bylaw sets a $50 minimum per sign based on actual labour and equipment. Avoiding that is the entire point of placing to the measurements in the first place.
Got signs and nowhere to put them?
Tell us your trade area and how long the campaign runs. We'll quote placement, rotation and retrieval as one job.