6 Tips for Designing Custom Warning Signs for Your Workplace

Tips for Designing Custom Warning Signs for Your Workplace

Enhance workplace safety with custom warning signs designed for your specific needs. Discover tips for effective design that communicates essential information.

Over 4.53 million Americans are injured in the workplace each year. Many of these incidents are preventable with appropriate signage denoting potential hazards.

Here, we’re going to give you six critical tips when designing custom warning signs for the workplace. Read on to keep your team safe and your business OSHA-compliant.

1. Know OSHA Requirements

The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) sets rules and regulations that businesses must follow to keep workers safe. They require that businesses have no variation in designs that warn people of specific hazards. If three signs denote a radiation-related danger, they must all be of the same sign type and design.

Employees also need to be instructed on how danger signs denote immediate danger in the area. Caution signs specifically are restricted to warning people about potential hazards and cannot be used in other areas (such as places where you simply want them to be mindful of packing things incorrectly). This situation would require a different type of sign that is not reserved for enhancing workplace safety.

There are several different sign types that OSHA has individual regulations for. Caution signs need a yellow background and black lettering. Danger signs need to be black, white, and red.

Knowing and adhering to these OSHA requirements and others helps your facility remain compliant. Your employees and visitors will be safer and minimal hazards will be present. You also won’t be subject to hefty fines from bodies that govern your industry like OSHA, ANSI, or ISO.

2. Keep Safety Instruction Messages Concise

While many signs simply have a single word and pictogram on them, safety instruction signs are a more complex requirement.

These signs are essential when posting more information about a hazard is required. While a Danger or Caution sign often will get its point across with one word and a couple of symbols, safety instruction signs can inform workers about how to safely handle equipment or navigate confined spaces.

You need to put all important and relevant information onto these signs. They must be thorough. However, keeping messages concise and to the point makes them easier to read.

This is especially important for those in high-risk workplaces with a lot of activity. They need to be able to read and interpret the sign in areas with many distractions. Use bullet points, short sentences, concise language, and bold text.

Note that a safety instruction sign must have a white background, green-and-white panel, and black lettering.

3. Prioritize Visibility

Safety-related signs need to be visible to everyone in the workplace. This is true even for those with mobile safety data sheets or easily accessible information on hazards. Employees need to know where hazards are at a glance and what risks are associated with the dangers.

This is the job of safety signage, and it needs to be easy to see in order to accomplish this purpose.

Make sure that all safety-related signs are large and bold. You also should post them in highly visible locations like empty walls, in front of frequently-used hazardous equipment, or near entryways into the workspace.

Try to position signage in areas with a lot of light. When you can’t, make sure that the signs are big and bold enough to still be visible even in the lowest possible light.

4. Use Widely-Accepted Symbols

Universally recognized symbols denote hazards in the workplace with simple images. This system labels chemicals and goes on safety data sheets, but the pictograms used also should go on signage. All of them are diamond-shaped and have a red border, simple black image, and white background.

The symbols are as follows:

• A flame for flammable products, self-reactive chemicals, and pyrophorics
• A flame over an open circle for oxidizers
• An exclamation mark for skin/eye/respiratory tract irritants, narcotic effects, and environmental ozone hazards
• A sideways tree and fish to denote aquatic toxicity
• A person with a six-sided shape on the chest, denoting carcinogens, organ and aspiration toxicity, and respiratory sensitizers
• Two test tubes hitting a bar and a hand, which denotes something that’s corrosive and can burn those who touch it
• A gas cylinder for gases under pressure
• An exploding bomb for explosives and self-reactive chemicals
• A skull and crossbones to show that something is potentially fatal

Using these symbols means that people will get the message regardless of what language they speak. They also are clear and easy to interpret with a single glance, so posting them can literally give people the information needed to protect their lives.

5. Consider Sign Shape

Much like different safety signs have varying color schemes, they also have distinct shape requirements.

Those with universally accepted symbols will be diamond-shaped. Others, like Danger signs, will be rectangular. Shock hazards are yellow and triangular while symbols that illustrate prohibited activities (like smoking) are circular.

Regardless of overall shape, OSHA requires all workplace safety signs to have blunted or rounded corners. This makes sense since points can cause head injuries, scratches, gashes, and even large puncture wounds when hit.

The sign also needs to be 100% free of splinters and sharp edges. This means that bolts and screws need to be installed in a way that doesn’t cause a hazardous sharp edge.

6. Get Help Designing Custom Warning Signs

Designing and using safety signs on your own is challenging. Durable Safety Signs offers a lot of pre-made designs to denote common hazards, toxins, and potential problems in the workplace. However, these are only the tip of the iceberg, which is where custom signs come in.

Coming up with your own OSHA-compliant designs can be challenging. It also can bring a lot of stress and worries that you may have done something wrong. Luckily, our team has experts available to consult with you about custom signage that fits your needs.

We’ll answer any questions you have either online or over the phone. This will help you understand your custom design needs so that you can design and print the perfect safety signage for your workplace.

Keep Employees Safe With OSHA-Compliant Signage

Now that you know how to design and place custom warning signs, it’s time to order the signage you need for safety and compliance.

Durable Safety Signs is committed to providing durable and long-lasting signage options for enterprises of all types. Contact our team to discuss pricing and ask any remaining questions you have.