Hospitals, like any large and complex place, need signs to make sure visitors, doctors, and patients can find rooms, departments, and other areas. However, in a medical facility, time is important, and it can mean life and death. Directional signs can help with this issue.
- Wayfinding Signs: These include maps, arrows, and directories. They work best at intersections and locations like entrances, elevators, and hallways.
- Room Identification Signs: These label patient rooms, operating rooms, and administrative offices. These signs include room numbers and names and can be customized with braille and tactile elements.
- Overhead Signs: Seen hanging from the ceiling and are spotted from far away. They are used in large hallways, parking garages, label departments, and emergency exits.
- Floor Graphics: These often-overlooked directional signs can help without getting in the way. They can include arrows, footprints, or color-coded paths that lead to specific destinations.
How to Plan a Sign System for a Hospital
- Conduct a Site Survey: This involves walking through the facility to find any locations where people might be lost. Some of these are entrances, elevators, hallways, waiting areas, and departments.
- Develop a Plan: Include the types of signs needed, how many, where they should be installed, and what they need to say.
- Design with Consistency: Use a uniform color scheme, font, and symbols on all the signs. Consistent design helps visitors quickly recognize and understand the signs, making navigation easier.
- Include Multilingual Options: Hospitals often serve diverse populations. Consider adding Spanish or other languages to ensure that non-English speaking visitors can read the signs.
ADA Guidelines for Hospital Signs
- Fonts and Sizes: The signs must have sans-serif fonts, meaning they don’t have any decorative elements. Also, the text must be a minimum of 5/8 inches high, and this increases the further away the sign needs to be read from.
- Braille and Tactile Elements: Braille must be placed below the text it is translating. The tactile characters must be raised by at least 1/32 inch.
- Proper Placement: Signs labeling rooms should be mounted on the wall adjacent to the latch side of the door, at 48 to 60 inches above the floor.
- High Contrast: This contrast must be at least 70%. For the best results, choose a light background with dark text. For example, black text on a white background is easy to read.
- Add Pictograms: Make sure the pictograms are at least six inches high and have text below describing the image.
Amazing Signs for Your Medical Center
Help your hospital be easy to navigate with custom signs from Amazing Signs. We are located in nearby Zephyrhills and want to help. Reach out to us today to schedule a time to plan your hospital sign system.
