Office Signage and Wayfinding: Helping People Find Their Way

Wayfinding starts with routes, not walls

The common approach is to complete a fit-out, notice people getting lost, and add signs where they hesitate.

The designed approach is to walk the routes first:

• A visitor arriving at the building entrance, reaching reception, then a meeting room, then finding the toilets
• A new employee finding their desk, the pantry, the fire exits, the meeting rooms
• A delivery reaching the correct door without crossing the visitor route

At every point where one of those journeys requires a choice, information is needed. Between those points, it is not.

The hierarchy

Level	Answers	Placed at
Primary	Which floor, which zone?	Lift lobbies, main entrances
Secondary	Which way from here?	Route junctions, corridor decisions
Tertiary	What is this room?	At each door or room
Statutory	Where is the exit?	As required, independent of the above

Keeping the levels distinct is what makes a system readable. A sign trying to serve two levels at once usually serves neither.

Statutory signage is not a design decision

Exit signs, escape route marking, assembly points and safety notices are requirements. Their positions, sizes, visibility and illumination — including behaviour during a power failure — are governed by the applicable rules for the building.

What applies to a specific project is determined under NBC 2016, Part 4 and local requirements by the fire consultant and the authority having jurisdiction. Fire safety signs are addressed in IS 12349, with graphical symbols in ISO 7010.

The practical design point: statutory signage must not compete visually with wayfinding or branding. If a bold feature sign draws attention away from an exit sign, the design has created a hazard.

Why it belongs in the design, not the snag list

Signage needs things that have to exist before the walls are finished:

• Power for illuminated signs, without surface cabling
• Fixings suited to the construction behind — glass, plasterboard, stone and timber all differ
• Lighting coordination, so signs are legible rather than in shadow, with interior illumination practice in IS 3646
• Wall finishes that the sign can sit on cleanly
• Space, so a sign is not competing with a switch plate or a fire panel

Every one of those is straightforward at design stage and awkward afterwards.

Materials and durability

Signs live at hand height on routes people use daily:

• Edges and corners get knocked
• Surfaces get touched and cleaned repeatedly
• Applied vinyl lifts at the edges over time
• Sunlit positions fade

Specify for that, and keep the system extensible — a floor will be reconfigured, rooms will be renamed, and a signage system that cannot absorb change gets replaced piecemeal with mismatched items.

Room numbering

Adopt a logical scheme at the outset — floor, zone, sequence — record it, and leave gaps for future rooms. Numbering invented during the fit-out produces a building nobody can navigate and a facilities record nobody can use.

Standards referenced

Fire and life safety provisions, including exit signage, in NBC 2016, Part 4; fire safety signs in IS 12349; graphical symbols for safety signs in ISO 7010; interior illumination practice in IS 3646. Statutory signage requirements for a specific building must be determined by the project's fire consultant and the authority having jurisdiction.