The sign you plant, not the one you mount. Custom yard signs on corrugated plastic with H-stakes — one side or two, one sign or a stack. Why 18 × 24 is the default, and every other decision, is on this page.
If you searched yard signs or custom yard signs for a listing, a campaign or a Saturday with a date on it, this is the spec — and the sign beside this text plants itself while you read.
A sheet, a print,
a wire stake.
That's the entire product, and every part of it is a decision you can make in a minute. The surface below builds one in the order the shop does.
Product · corrugated yard sign — blank, printed, staked, in that order
Corrugated plastic — the sheet with flutes
Yard signs are cut from corrugated plastic — the trade calls it coroplast — two thin plastic walls with a row of flutes running between them, the same construction as corrugated cardboard with none of cardboard's opinions about rain. That is what makes the product work: light enough to carry in a stack and post with one hand, rigid enough to stand up on a wire stake and hold its face flat to the street. Look closely at the surface above and you can see the flutes drawn in.
The flutes are also why the artwork has a rule attached: the stake's legs ride inside them, so the flutes must run vertically and the free 18 × 24 template keeps the lower two inches of the design clear for the stake legs. Build inside the template and the hardware problem is already solved before you upload.
The H-stake
The standard hardware is the H-stake: two wire prongs joined by a crossbar, exactly as the surface above drives it home. The stake goes into the ground first, then the sign slides down over the prongs — in that order, because pushing on the sign itself is how corrugated creases. No tools, no post, no concrete, and the sign comes out as fast as it went in, which is the whole reason this format owns everything temporary.
One side or two
A single-sided sign suits anything read from one approach — set against a wall, a fence, or facing one direction of a one-way street. A double-sided yard sign carries the print on both faces of the same sheet and earns its place anywhere people pass in both directions: a corner lot, a sidewalk, a median strip, a driveway entrance seen from either way down the road. The decision is about traffic, not budget — what a second face adds to the bill is a rate fact, and rates on this site publish only once verified, so it appears on your quote rather than as a guess here.
Real estate, elections
& everything with a date.
Three trades keep this format alive, and each one wants the sign built slightly differently. Same sheet, three different jobs.
Real estate
A listing sign is read from a moving car, which strips the design decision to its bones: the status and the phone number, set large, and everything else optional. Open-house and directional signs are the double-sided case in the wild — planted at corners where traffic approaches from both ways, with an arrow doing most of the talking. If your brokerage has brand rules, send them with the artwork and the proof follows them.
Political & campaign
Campaign signs are the original yard sign and the reason the 18 × 24 corrugated format exists at the volume it does — a campaign thinks in stacks, not signs. One caution that belongs on the page rather than in fine print: cities regulate where campaign signs can stand and when, with rules that vary by city, by the kind of roadway and by the election calendar. We print them; where and when they get planted stays your side of the job, the same way permits work on our custom signs page.
Events — anything with a date on it
Garage sales, graduations, birthdays, church events, seasonal openings: the sign has one weekend of work in it, and corrugated with an H-stake is the cheapest honest way to be loud on a street corner for exactly that long. Directional arrows earn their keep here too — one sign at the destination and two or three pointing to it outsell one big sign almost every time, which is a quantity decision before it is a design decision.
Why 18 × 24 is the default.
It's the trade's answer to three constraints at once. Big enough to read from the street, small enough to ride a wire stake, cut clean from a standard sheet.
An 18 × 24 face carries a name and a number at a size a passing car can read, without turning into a sail the moment the wind picks up — a larger face on the same two wire prongs works the ground looser every gusty afternoon. It also cuts economically from standard sheet stock, which is why the whole industry landed on it. The templates page carries the dieline in both orientations — 18 × 24 portrait and 24 × 18 landscape, with the same stake clearance drawn — portrait when the message stacks, landscape when it reads as one line.
When the job outgrows the format, it usually outgrows the stake at the same time: site and construction signage steps up to bigger corrugated or rigid dibond panels on frame fixings, up to the full 4 × 8 sheet — that lane lives on the large format printing page. And when the message stops being temporary altogether, it stops being corrugated: metal, post-and-panel and illuminated work is what the custom signs page is for.
| Build | Material | Mounting | Artwork at size | Turnaround |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yard sign · 18 × 24 | Corrugated plastic | H-stake · lower 2″ kept clear | 100 ppi · 0.125″ bleed | Quoted per job |
| Yard sign · 24 × 18 | Corrugated plastic | H-stake · same clearance | 100 ppi · 0.125″ bleed | Quoted per job |
| Double-sided | Corrugated plastic · both faces | H-stake | Two pages, or say "same both sides" | Quoted per job |
| Site / construction | Corrugated or dibond | Stakes or frame fixings | 80–100 ppi | Quoted per job |
One sign is a normal order. So is a box.
Digital printing has no plate and no setup run, so a single custom yard sign is an economical, ordinary order — a housewarming, one listing, one Saturday. From there the thinking is about coverage, not discounts: a campaign or a brokerage buys signs the way it buys intersections, and an event usually wants one sign at the destination plus the directional signs that feed it. Decide the count from the map first; artwork is drawn once however many sheets it prints on.
Yard sign questions.
Corrugated plastic — coroplast in the trade — two thin plastic walls with flutes running between them, like corrugated cardboard rebuilt to ignore weather. It is light enough to carry in stacks, rigid enough to stand flat on a wire stake, and the flutes double as the channel the stake legs ride in, which is why the lower two inches of the artwork stay clear.
Because it answers three constraints at once: large enough for a name and a number to read from the street, small enough that an H-stake can hold it without the wind working it loose, and cut economically from standard sheet stock. It runs portrait or landscape — 18 × 24 when the message stacks, 24 × 18 when it reads as one line — and both templates carry the same stake clearance.
Decide by traffic, not budget. Single-sided suits a sign read from one approach — against a wall or fence, or facing one direction. Double-sided earns its place wherever people pass both ways: corners, sidewalks, medians and driveway entrances, which is why open-house directional signs are almost always two-faced. What the second face adds to the price appears on your quote.
The H-stake — two wire prongs and a crossbar — is the standard hardware for this format, and the stake goes into the ground before the sign slides over it. Whether stakes are bundled with the sign or itemised separately is a pricing fact this site publishes only once verified, so it is spelled out on your quote rather than assumed here.
High contrast and few words: the sign is read in seconds from the street, so one message set large beats a paragraph every time. Files want 100 ppi at the final 18 × 24 size with 0.125 inch of bleed, the lower two inches kept clear for the stake legs — the free template draws all three rules. If your logo only exists as a photo or an old card, send it anyway; redrawing artwork is normal shop work.
Banner printing
When the message should hang from something instead of stand in it.
Large format printing
Site signage, posters and everything else priced by the square foot.
Templates
The 18 × 24 dieline with bleed and stake clearance drawn.
Custom signs
When the message stops being temporary and wants metal or light.