Your company’s signage provides a lot of information regarding your brand in just a glance. Of course, it displays the name of your business, but there is more to it than just that. It delivers a tone via color, style, and size. With that in mind, more and more companies have embraced the trend of channel letters. This is a type of exterior signage, with a high impact and offers a huge bang for the buck. It eaves any person who sees it with a positive impression.
There are several reasons why many businesses have turned to channel letters for signage, but before we explore them, it makes sense to mention the types of channel letters with the aim of helping you pick the best one for your business.
What is a Channel Letter
Before we delve any further, it is important to answer a question that you might be pondering right now: what makes this type of signage different from any other? Well, channel letters are 3-dimensional, meaning that they extrude from the wall. Each number or letter is designed from heavy-duty material, commonly aluminum that is rust proof. The depth of each character varies depending on the size of the entire sign, and the face of each character is covered with translucent acrylic. These letters and numbers are mounted on the wall either individually or to a ‘raceway’ that is then mounted to the wall.
The Different Types of Channel Letters In The Market
In this world where competition keeps on thriving, channel letter signs have the potential to catch the eyes of potential customers, and it is excellent for outshining competitors. They come in an array of color schemes, sizes, and font styles to suit any business need.
Front Lit Channel Letters
These are usually known as standard channel letters, and they are normally found at retail malls and shopping centers. They’re illuminated from the inside by neon gas tubes or LED modules. The illumination goes through an acrylic front surface, thus giving the signage an appealing appearance. Sometimes, a translucent overlay is applied over the acrylic surface in order to provide the desired color or shade.
Open Face Channel Letters
These used to be quite common. Open face channel letters are simply an aluminum can that is shaped like a letter with the open side acting as the face and with an exposed neon tubing. However, light law has moved towards curbing light pollution by requiring a more diffused form of illumination. This has made these types of channel letters to become less common.
Reverse Lit Channel Letters
These are ideally known as halo-lit channel letters or back-lit channel letters. The light is reflected on the mounting surface. When the sign is being installed, some space or a gap is maintained between the mounting surface and the rear of the sign. Aluminum is utilized in order to cover the front of the characters. The back, on the other hand, is covered with polycarbonate. This is to prevent creatures from nesting inside the channel letter sign.
The viewer of these types of signs sees a solid face which can be of any color or shade. They can also be utilized without any form of illumination. The characters are mounted off the wall with raceway or studs so that the lights inside can glow around each letter from the back.
Specialty Channel Letters
These are distinctively designed signs that can be tailored in order to meet your business needs. To customize additional beauty to the letters or numbers, you can utilize a balanced mix of color-changing neon lights, light emitting diodes or new letter colors.
Now that you know the different types of channel letters and those that are commonly used and rarely mounted, the next step is to learn the benefits that they offer.
The Advantages of Channel Letters
Ideal Visibility
This is one of the biggest benefits and why these signs are especially popular. That is because whether the sign is illuminated or not, the channel letter sign will still provide top-notch visibility and so, anybody will be able to find your company, whether they have visited before or not. An ideal signage company will be able to design a sign that is properly sized since it is crucial that potential customers can see and read it from a distance. You do not want the sign to be too small, and at the same time, you do not want to dwarf your entrance with a huge sign.
Energy Efficient
One of the more prominent advantages of channel letter signs is that they are energy efficient. If you pick the illuminated kind, each character is lit with LEDs, ascertain that the sign can be viewed from far, whether it’s day or night.
Lit characters act as a beacon to anyone in the region, and regardless of the weather condition, your business will still stand out. Ideally, the LED letters will give energy savings of over 30% compared to their neon counterparts. Not only that but the installation of these signs is completed in no time, and the repairs are a breeze as well.
Channel Letters are Durable
Aluminum is lightweight, but it is ideally a durable material. It tends to stand up pretty well to weather elements including sun, snow, rain, fire, ice and even high winds. It is also very affordable and calls for little maintenance. Should you need any repairs to your signage, it is way easier to make the repairs to the channel letters as opposed to neon signs, which tend to take weeks to repair.
Simple Customization
The fabrication process of channel letters is pretty versatile, and so, the signage company that you pick should be able to design almost any size, shape, color, style or typeface that you want. Aluminum, the material used to create most signs as it doesn’t rust is quite pliable, and this allows for creative and very specific requests to be achieved.
Regardless of any style that you want for your business, you will certainly need an expert to design, create and install the channel letters. Depending on the local sign codes, the characters may need UL listing and most probably a licensed contractor to install the letters. As such, you need to be very wary of low-ball estimates when it comes to the design and installation of channel letter signs.