Maintaining Safety in Your Parking Lot: Striping and Signage Best Practices

A safe and efficient parking lot, whether a commercial space or an apartment complex, is essential. Besides, you must follow local regulations to ensure compliance, accessibility, and orderly traffic flow. However, it’s not simply complying with the rules but ensuring that your parking lot, striping, and parking signages are up to the standards and accessibility requirements in your area.

You need a well-maintained parking lot with proper signages and striping to ensure the safety of both drivers and pedestrians. The markings on the pavements and the signs around the parking lot must be clear and visible to help organize traffic flow, assign parking spaces, and communicate the rules and regulations of the place. This article explores the best practices for striping and signage in a parking lot to ensure safety and efficiency.

Parking Lot Striping: Best Practices

Proper striping is what makes an organized and safe parking lot. Thus, following the best practices to maintain clear and effective striping is best.

Conduct Regular Maintenance

With lots of vehicle and foot traffic, weather conditions, and constant exposure to the elements, you can expect your parking lot’s striping to get wear and tear. Do not compromise your patron’s safety; schedule regular maintenance and re-striping – it could be an annual or bi-annual touch-up of the lines and striping on the pavement.

Use Correct and Quality Paint

Whether it’s your first time striping the pavement or re-striping, invest in high-quality and durable paint. Choose a quality paint that lasts longer, can resist fading, and can maintain visibility even in adverse weather conditions. Consider using reflective paints or beads to enhance visibility in areas with low lighting, especially at night.

In most cases, latex paint is used for striping resurfaced parking lots. However, you must check the local regulations in your area if some states don’t allow latex paint. If latex is not permitted, you can use oil-based paints. Regarding colors, most parking lots use white or yellow stripes. 

Proper Striping Placement

Aside from using the correct paints, you must also ensure that all the parking space lines, directional arrows, and other markings are evenly spaced. These lines should also be consistently placed throughout the parking pavement. When your parking lines are evenly spaced and perfectly straight, it will prevent confusion and make it easy for drivers to navigate and park correctly in your parking lot. 

Striping Should Be ADA Compliant

Parking lots are required to have spaces dedicated to individuals with disabilities. As such, you must ensure that your parking pavement complies with ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) regulations. Reserved spots for persons with disabilities should have clear signage and striping. You must also ensure that your parking lot’s space dimensions and accessibility features, like ramps and pathways, follow the ADA guidelines.

No Parking Zones and Fire Lanes

If your parking lot is for a building, you must dedicate a space for emergency vehicles and firefighters. When striping, make sure to designate the fire lanes and the no-parking zones clearly. These should be marked with red striping and accompanied by appropriate signage. Also, these areas must be kept clear for easy access during emergencies. 

Repair and Repaint

Even though you have a regular maintenance and repainting schedule, you should still repair and repaint the striping whenever necessary. Inspect the striping visually and promptly re-stripe those faded and worn-out lines. 

Parking Lot Signage: Best Practices

Signage is vital in a parking lot, especially if it’s relatively big and sees a lot of traffic daily. An effective parking lot signage must complement the striping on the pavement and provide the necessary information to drivers and pedestrians using the parking spaces. As such, here are some tips on the best practices for parking lot signage:

Use Clear and Visible Signage

Visibility is critical for parking lots. Thus, you must ensure that all signs are clear, visible, and free from any obstruction. All signs in the parking lot should be clear and easy to read, even from afar. Remove overgrown vegetation, graffiti, and other obstacles that can hinder the effectiveness of your signs. 

Be Consistent with Your Signage Design

Use signage with consistent design – from color to font for more clarity. Consistent design creates a professional and organized appearance and helps drivers and pedestrians easily understand the information being conveyed.

Include Complete Parking Lot Signs

The most common parking lot signs you need to include are stop signs, yield signs, one-way signs, speed limit signs, no parking signs, and reserved parking signs. Ensure all these are strategically placed within the parking lot and highly visible to everyone. 

If you have a big commercial parking lot, include a more comprehensive list of parking lot signs. For regulatory signs, you need to include handicapped parking signs. For warning signs – meant to alert drivers of potential hazards – you need to have pedestrian crossing signs, slippery when wet signs, and watch for children signs. 

Informational signs are meant to provide information about the parking facility. These include entrance and exit, visitor parking, and payment instruction signs (if it’s a pay parking facility). These can also be considered directional signs as they direct drivers to specific areas. 

Maintenance and Inspection

Like any other elements in your parking lot, you must conduct regular maintenance and proper inspection of your parking lot signs. Always check for signs of damage, wear and tear, and vandalism. Promptly replace damaged or deformed signs to maintain clarity and keep everyone safe in the parking lot.

Safety Considerations in Parking Lots

In addition to striping and signage, other things should be considered to keep order and safety in the parking lot. These include adequate lighting, adding speed bumps, crosswalks, and sidewalks, removing ice and snow, and installing other security features. 

Safety is essential for the well-being of all parking lot users – from drivers, passengers, and pedestrians. By following the best practices above, you can prevent accidents and always have a more organized traffic flow.

Need help with parking lot striping? Anderson & Sons Asphalt is your go-to company for commercial and residential asphalt services, including driveway installation, parking lot pavement, sealcoating, striping, and repairs. Contact our team, and we’ll assist you from planning to project completion!