Industries
Signage for Healthcare Facilities
Patients and visitors are already stressed and often in an unfamiliar building. Signage is not decoration here, it is how people find the room they need without asking twice.
The problem healthcare signage actually solves
A hospital or medical office building puts a stranger in an unfamiliar space on the worst day of their week, and asks them to find a specific room without staff walking them there. That is a different design problem than a retail directory or an office lobby. Wayfinding in a healthcare setting has to work for someone who is anxious, in a hurry, or accompanying a family member, and who will not stop to study a map.
Lake County’s healthcare landscape ranges from large acute-care campuses to single-suite specialty practices. Northwestern Medicine Lake Forest Hospital, Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, and Vista Medical Center East in Waukegan represent the acute-care end. The Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago, a merged VA and Navy facility, and the adjacent Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, sit on the federal and academic side. Dental, specialty and urgent care practices are spread across every municipality in the county, and there is a meaningful senior living cluster around Libertyville, Vernon Hills and Grayslake. Each of these building types carries the same accessibility baseline and a different day-to-day signage problem.
Room identification and the tactile signage trap
The single most common mistake we see on healthcare signage, in Lake County and everywhere else, is treating every sign in the building as if it needs the same level of compliance. It does not.
Signs identifying permanent rooms and spaces, meaning patient rooms, restrooms, department names at a suite entrance and similar, must meet both the tactile character and braille requirements and the visual character requirements in the 2010 ADA Standards (Section 216.2), and at a single door are mounted on the wall at the latch side (703.4.2). Directional and informational signs, the kind pointing toward radiology or listing departments down a corridor, require only visual character compliance under Section 216.3; raised characters and braille are not required. Means-of-egress signage is its own category under Section 216.4: the sign identifying each door at an exit stairway, exit passageway or exit discharge requires both tactile and visual compliance regardless of what is behind the door (Section 216.4.1), while directional exit signs and area of refuge signs need visual characters only (Sections 216.4.2 and 216.4.3).
Getting this distinction wrong in either direction costs money. Over-specifying tactile fabrication on directional signage adds cost with no compliance benefit. Under-specifying it on permanent room ID signage is the finding an inspector or an ADA complaint will catch. We scope every sign on the sign schedule to the correct requirement before fabrication, not after.
Phased work in a building that never closes
Almost no healthcare renovation happens with the facility empty. A wing gets updated while the rest of the hospital or clinic keeps seeing patients. That changes how the signage work gets sequenced.
We build the sign schedule around the construction phasing, not the other way around, so each section of the building gets surveyed, fabricated and installed on its own timeline. Interim signage covers gaps during transition. Signs posted for seven days or less are exempt from the Section 216 scoping requirements (2010 ADA Standards 216.1, Exception 3), so a short-term detour doesn’t need fully compliant fabrication, but any interim sign that stays up longer than seven days must meet the same requirements as a permanent sign of its type. Permanent signage goes in once the space is finished and the room numbering is final.
Department changes and directory maintenance
Healthcare organizations reorganize service lines, relocate departments and rename units more often than most other building types. A directory or room ID system built with fixed, non-modular panels turns every one of those changes into a full sign remake.
Wherever the sign package and budget allow, we specify modular directory strips and replaceable inserts for exactly this reason. When a department moves or a service line gets renamed, the fix is a new panel or a swapped insert referencing the same message schedule we built at the start of the project, not a new field survey and a new set of shop drawings.
Where we start
Most healthcare engagements start with a field survey of the existing sign package, whether that is a full new construction submittal review or an assessment of what needs updating in an occupied building. Tell us what you’re working on and we will scope the room and space categories, flag which signs are tactile-and-braille and which are visual-only, and build a schedule around your renovation phasing.
Frequently asked questions
No, and this is the mistake most facilities make. Under the 2010 ADA Standards, tactile characters and braille are required on signs identifying permanent rooms and spaces (Section 216.2), such as patient room numbers, restrooms, and department names at a suite entrance, and on signs at exit doors (Section 216.4.1), not on every sign in the building. Directional signs pointing to radiology or a corridor sign listing departments ahead need only visual character compliance under Section 216.3: no raised text, no braille required. Getting this backwards means paying for tactile fabrication on signs that never needed it, or worse, skipping it on the room ID signs that do.
The sign identifying each door at an exit stairway, exit passageway or exit discharge needs both tactile and visual characters (2010 ADA Standards 216.4.1), regardless of what is behind the door. Directional signs pointing the way to an accessible exit, and area of refuge signs, need visual characters only (2010 ADA Standards 216.4.2 and 216.4.3).
Yes, that is the normal way we run healthcare work. We sequence a sign package by wing or by floor so each section gets surveyed, fabricated and installed while the rest of the facility keeps operating. The sign schedule tracks which rooms are done, which are pending, and which are on hold for a punch list item, so nothing gets installed twice and nothing gets missed when the next phase starts.
We build the room ID and directory system with modular inserts wherever the budget allows, so a department rename or a relocated service line is a replacement panel or an updated directory strip, not a full sign remake. We keep the original sign schedule and shop drawings on file so a future change order references the same room numbering and message schedule, not a fresh survey.
We specify materials and finishes rated for the cleaning chemicals used in clinical areas, not standard interior sign substrates. That matters most on high-touch surfaces near patient rooms and in exam corridors, where a sign gets wiped down multiple times a shift. We flag this during the field survey rather than after installation.
Both. On new construction or a full tenant improvement we typically work from the general contractor’s schedule and submittals. On an occupied renovation or an ongoing signage need, we often work directly with the in-house facility management or plant operations team, which is common in healthcare where signage changes happen year-round, not just during a construction project.