Garage Sale Signs

Signs are one of the most important advertising tools you can have while running a garage sale. To create a successful sign, make sure you adhere to these guidelines:

• The bigger and bolder your lettering, the farther away it can be read
• An arrow pointing which way to go from the sign
• An address
• Date of your sale, so that if you forget to take down your signs, people don't continue driving to your house

Browse the pictures below and learn from others' mistakes and fortunes. Click images to make them larger.

The Bad Signs

Using cardboard for your signs in a neighboorhood of trees greatly increases the chance drivers will completely miss your sign. Using black ink on a cardboard sign shows for some of the worst readability; Many drivers don't want to have to stop and get out of the car to read a sign.

Using a pink 8x11 piece of paper and writing on it in red is just like using invisible ink. You can barely read this sign up close.

Here you can compare a cardboard sign to another sign. Given a choice, which sign do you think drivers are going to follow first?

This sign almost got it. As you can see, by not making their lettering bold, you can barely read the sign from far away or while in a moving vehicle.

This sign almost had it down as well. Using bright colors such as teal on white colored signs make for poor readability, especially if the sun is shining on your sign.

This sign takes an 8x11 pieces of paper and crams too much info and pictures onto it, making everything impossible to read from a vehicle. Remember to keep your signs simple!

Both of these signs need to be way bigger. They don't look like much when they are flapping in the wind as you drive by.

This universal garage sale sign is easily recognizable from the street, but unfortunately the white space given to you makes it nearly impossible to read to all but a pedestrian.

Although the right colors were used, this sign is too small with too much information to make it easily readable.

The Good Signs

Not only do these sign makes use high contrasting colors, but they were also creative and attached streamers to get your attention.

From far away, you can easily see that this sign is for a garage sale and where the arrow points.

Again, having an easy to see arrow on your sign really helps in guiding people to your sale.

This is one of the few exceptions where using a cardboard sign is acceptable. These signers used all the right colors on cardboard.