Tulsa Apartment Signs: The Top 7 You Need for Your Residents

Apartment signs aren’t something that most people think about on a daily basis, but it’s a critical element in keeping your Tulsa apartment community functioning smoothly.

Sure, we all know that it’s helpful to have signs that show you where you can park, or where the clubhouse is, or when the pool hours are. 

But the most valuable aspect of your apartment signage, which often goes overlooked, comes from the positive environment of safety, trust, and familiarity that they create and which translates into more long-term and reliable residents.

So if you’re just getting ready to plan out your community’s budget, or if you’ve noticed a marked uptick in cranky residents — which can be a symptom of inadequate signage — we’ve got you covered.

Let’s dive into which signs are the most pivotal for the day-to-day function of your community, the well-being of your residents, and the overall success of your brand.

Monument and Post & Panel Signs

These are the large, eye-catching signs that are typically placed at the entrances to your apartment community, welcoming current residents home and inviting future residents alike.

Aside from being an attractive attention-getter from the street, these signs also play an important role in creating one of the biggest first impressions you make, as they are an element of your signage that most prominently showcases your community’s branding.

When we dig into the research, we see that it’s here that you have one of your best opportunities to lay the foundations for a positive emotional experience. 

The challenge? You’ve only got about 0.67 seconds to make a strong visual first impression. No pressure, right? (Don’t worry, we’ve been helping apartments throughout Tulsa make great first impressions with their signage for years. Keep on reading.)

Here, your brand’s color, logo, and fonts must work in unison with your sign’s physical dimensions, location, orientation, and material composition in order to foster the positive emotional landscape you’re seeking to create.

Just getting started with your apartment community’s branding? No problem!

We’ve created a helpful list of popular material and color combinations that can help you decide on the signage that’s best for your brand and the emotions you want to evoke within your residents.

By the way: If one of these options jumped out at you, just let us know, and we can sit down for a quick chat to learn more about your goals. 

We’ve been helping apartment community throughout Tulsa and across North America perfect their signage and attract residents for years, and we’d love to be of service.

Parking and Traffic Signs

With 20% of automobile accidents occurring in parking lots, they’re far and away the most common location for collisions.

Why? Simply put, when we enter into a parking lot, we let ourselves slip into a false sense of security. And on top of that, modern distractions — especially from smartphones — abound.

Thankfully, by simply integrating some helpful signage throughout your parking lots, you cut down on distractions (and reduce your community’s risk of accident liability) while improving your residents’ safe driving habits. 

According to a Jacksonville State University study, simple reminders that encourage safe driving habits such as putting away cellphones, buckling safety belts, and slowing down increase those actions by up to 60%

Most importantly, your signage — such as handicapped parking signs — also keeps you in compliance with the parking and accessibility laws in your city and state.

And the best part? A lot of this signage, where legally applicable, can include elements from your branding, allowing you to increase safety, reduce risk, and create another touchpoint that strengthens brand familiarity.

Highly Visible Apartment Building Address Signs and Unit Numbers

Every apartment community has building and unit numbers, so this seems a little too obvious, right?

While seemingly simple on the surface, there are a few important factors that are often overlooked when deciding on the design and placement of your apartment buildings’ markers and unit numbers.

With building markers specifically, it’s vital that they are visible — in a highly-legible font and color — from every side of the building where someone driving or on foot might be able to view the building.

Naturally, this is helpful and necessary directional information that’s useful to everyone.

But in emergency situations, where mere seconds can make all the difference, your building signage can literally be a lifesaver.

Laws surrounding building markers and emergency services may vary depending upon your city and state, so be sure to check with your city to ensure you’re in full compliance.

Apart from aiding emergency services, there’s also another consideration that’s increasingly affecting more of your residents’ daily lives: On-demand food delivery and other convenience-focused services.

With the exponential rise of services like UberEats, Doordash, and TaskRabbit, which can’t simply leave their deliveries or services at the clubhouse office, your residents expect easy and quick identification of their apartment building and unit.

To best complement your building and unit numbering — and to make life a little easier for residents and others — we highly recommend wayfinding signage near your community’s entrances. 

Together, these help everyone quickly understand where each building is while reducing the number of frustrated residents and delivery drivers calling the clubhouse.

Pool, Cooking Area, and other Apartment Amenity Signs

Amenities can be a major selling point for potential residents who are considering the move to your Tulsa apartment community.

Without proper safety and wayfinding signage, however, the overall experience they offer your residents is severely degraded.

Of course, your residents need to be able to easily make their way from their building to your grill area, pool, or dog park. This is one of the most direct needs that professional, branded apartment signage can fulfill.

But the real value of amenity signage is its power as a cost-saver for your company, as well as its ability to help keep your residents (and their pets) safe and healthy.

For apartment communities with dog parks, signage can be adjoined to pick-up stations, helping your residents notice them, understand and abide by the pick-up rules, and make disposal easy.

With grills and other cooking areas, your signage helps your residents understand how to operate the equipment safely or when the equipment will be ready should it be down for maintenance. 

And for amenities such as gyms or pools, your residents will know their hours of operation, when they’re closed for cleaning, and how to abide by the community rules while safely using any equipment.

Over time, these small signage installations help keep shared spaces clean and reduce the chances of resident accident or injury, reducing maintenance costs and decreasing incidences of liability.

Wayfinding and Directional Signs

Wayfinding, as one of the most critical functions of all signage, helps your residents and guests know where they are and get to where they need to go.

And while wayfinding signs can be great opportunities to further incorporate your branding into your community, truly effective wayfinding signage should be unobtrusive and adhere to a few key principles.

Your Tulsa Apartment’s Wayfinding Signage Should:

• • • Display your pathways and on-site landmarks graphically, not via text
    • Use only the text that’s needed to describe key wayfinding elements
    • Use large, highly-legible fonts used that are consistent with branding
    • Use colors that provide sufficient contrast to enable those with monochromatic vision to distinguish shades
    • Not deviate from the International Symbol of Access if it is implemented in your sign.

We understand if it feels there’s a lot to take in when it comes to your Tulsa apartment community’s signage. But we’ve got your back.

We’ve helped many communities just like yours design and install signage that’s easily accessible and helps residents get where they need.

Access Control Signs

Throughout your property, there are multiple areas where none of your residents should have access — both for their well-being and the operation of the community as a whole.

It’s in these places where access control signs are one of the first layers of security you can implement to ensure your residents, their children, and guests stay safe.

Additionally, you control signs help authorized professionals, such as plumbers, electricians, or members of your maintenance staff know that they’re in the right location.

Community Messaging Signs

If you are a property manager or have a manager on your team, we’ll bet they can confirm that barely anyone reads (let alone responds to) emails sent from the corporate office or the on-site staff.

Mind you, we’re not advocating that you stop emailing your residents. Rather, you should amplify your current messaging efforts through signage.

Apartment community messaging signs, especially those placed near the entrances and exits, are quite effective at reminding your residents that rent is due, or of one-time events such as: 

• • Hard overnight freezes, wherein water faucets need to be left open
  • Upcoming parking lot resurfacing
  • Small events such as barbeques or holiday celebrations

And the best part? You can have quite a bit of fun with the design of these signs.

They can be a great way for the property’s staff to connect with the residents through lighthearted designs that draw attention to the message while having a little fun.

Conclusion

Apartment signage is an element of Tulsa apartment living that’s often overlooked, but is a vital part of keeping your residents safe and informed.

And there’s no question that there are a lot of factors you have to consider when implementing your on-site signage. 

Between effective design that’s eye-catching while staying consistent with your branding and the various laws that govern your signs’ implementation, it can feel overwhelming.

That’s where we want to be of service to you. 

We’ve helped numerous apartment communities — both new and existing — design and install signage that eases the lives of residents, amplifies branding, and adheres with all laws and ordinances.

Don’t have a lot of time? No problem. A brief chat with Michelle on our sales team or a quick submission of our contact form is all it takes to get your project started today.