The Lamp Room

PDF file containing guidance on emergency lighting exit sign legends. I have noticed that sometimes arrows above doors will point down and sometimes they will point up although the direction is the same. It seems that an arrow up is correct:

"When you survey your buildings you will probably find many out of date signs, there will be signs missing, or they do
not give a clear message, e.g. many signs have been installed above a door with the direction arrow pointing down
rather than up when the sign means straight ahead"

Very handy for work. Thanks Oliver.

No problem

Good work. One does have to question whether it damn well matters if the arrow points up or down though, the general public do not know the difference.

Annoys me that after pretty much 3 decades of arrows pointing down, some muppet has changed them to up. I almost wonder if there's an ulterior motive here, driven by the manufacturers desire to flog us a load of bullshit LED fittings. Basically, you go any try to find legend panels for older fluorescent fittings with the arrow pointing up..... You'll find it's pretty much impossible with most fittings, unless you then them made, or use opal acrylic and stick legends onto them. So, is this deliberate to drive the sales of LED products. I'm certainly not going to be bothering to replace them in the buildings I look after.

On a side note, the Hindhead tunnel (1.8 miles of dual carriageway under the Devils Punchbowl in Surrey) has lane open and closed illuminated signs. A red 'X' above a closed lane and a greed arrow pointing DOWN above an open lane.... They don't seem to be in any hurry to change that and they've only just replaced all of these, new ones still point down.

I agree the arrow change is just stupid and I don't think it makes the sign "unclear" at all.

In my opinion, I don't see what was wrong with the old EXIT text. A small arrow would be placed to indicate either left or right on the legend.



Here are some picture I've took over the years and these all have apparently wrong arrows. As you say, it just seems like an excuse to replace good fittings.


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I don't see how a down arrow could be so confusing that someone can't leave the building in a fire. All of these example of exit signs are very clear and the exit is unmistakable.

Now imagine the sign with the new correct (up) arrow, installed above an exit door, with an attic access hatch in the ceiling above the sign