San Francisco sign permit — will your storefront sign get rejected?

San Francisco ties your wall-sign area to your neighborhood-commercial district and your frontage, under Planning Code Article 6, taking whichever is less of a per-foot multiplier or a hard cap. NC-1 gets 1 sq ft per foot up to 50; NC-2 gets 2× up to 100; NC-3 and busy corridors get 3× up to 150 (Planning Code §607.1). Flashing and animated light is prohibited in these districts outside the designated special sign illumination districts (§607.1(i)). If your second storefront is up the valley, none of this carries over — Sacramento runs its own sign ordinance, which we walk through in the Sacramento sign rules.

This tool reads the Planning Code sign rules that SF Planning and the Department of Building Inspection apply and tells you where your plan stands before you pay for fabrication or file a permit.

Maximum total on-premise sign area. "Mult" = multiply by your street frontage in feet; cap is the hard ceiling.

Source: SF Planning Code Article 6 (§602–607). "Lesser" = smaller of frontage×multiplier or the cap. Flashing and animated light is prohibited in NC districts (§607.1(i)).

Projecting signs in NC and RC districts

One projecting sign per business, and two for a business whose unit fronts two adjoining streets. The sign may project no more than 75% of the distance from the street property line to the curb, or 6 ft 6 in, whichever is less. Size and height depend on the district group in §607.1(f):

Source: San Francisco Ordinance No. 97-25 (two projecting signs for corner businesses), which sets out the current §607.1(f) projecting-sign text. Read 10 October 2026. In the Fillmore Street NCT District one projecting sign per building may be larger under the conditions in §607.1(f)(2)(C)(v).

San Francisco reviews your sign twice — Planning first, then Building — and one piece of paperwork can stop the permit from issuing at all.

Source: SF Planning (Signs, Planning Code Article 6); sf.gov Get a permit to install a sign or an awning, read 10 October 2026.

Read that middle phrase twice: making an existing sign brighter is one of the listed acts. Swapping a dim face for a lit one, or a lit one for a brighter one, is an intensification in illumination — it needs to conform to Article 6 and it needs a permit, even though nothing about the sign’s size changed. The same subsection also fixes what happens to a conforming application: one “shall be approved by the Planning Department without modification or disapproval by the Planning Department or the Planning Commission.”

§604(b) closes the gap people fall into: these provisions apply to work of those types on all signs unless specifically exempted by the Code, “whether or not a permit for such Sign is required under the San Francisco Building Code,” and “in cases in which permits are not required under the Building Code, a Planning application shall be submitted to the Planning Department for approval.” No building permit needed is not no filing.

That qualifier is the whole point: the exception is from the paperwork, not from the standards.

Source: San Francisco Planning Code, Article 6 — §604 (Permits and Conformity Required), subsections (a), (b) and (c), read 30 September 2026. Quoted language is reproduced as the Code states it; the truncation in (c)(4)(C) is marked rather than filled. Articles 10 and 11 and the San Francisco Building Code are cited but not described, and no fee or review time appears in this source; the Planning fees are in the “How much does a San Francisco sign permit cost?” section below.

§603 is a different kind of exemption from §604(c). Where §604(c) lifts the permit, §603 lifts the article: “Nothing in this Article 6 shall apply to any of the following signs.”

Its first category is noncommercial signs, and the Code introduces the list as “including but not limited to” — so the eight items are examples of the category, not its boundary.

• Official public notices, and notices posted by public officers in performance of their duties. (a)(1)
• Governmental signs for control of traffic and other regulatory purposes, street signs, danger signs, railroad crossing signs, and signs of public service companies indicating danger and aids to service or safety. (a)(2)
• Temporary display posters, without independent structural support, in connection with political campaigns and with civic noncommercial health, safety, and welfare campaigns. (a)(3)
• Flags, emblems, insignia, and posters of any nation or political subdivision, and temporary displays of a patriotic, religious, charitable, or other civic character. (a)(4)
• House numbers, whether illuminated or not, “no trespassing,” “no parking,” and other warning signs. (a)(5)
• Commemorative plaques placed or provided by recognized historical agencies. (a)(6)
• Religious symbols. (a)(7)
• Information plaques or signs which identify to the public open space resources, architectural features, creators of artwork, or otherwise provide information required by this Code or by other City agencies — or an identifying sign which directs the general public and/or patrons of a particular establishment to open space or parking resources. (a)(8)
• Signs within a stadium, open-air theater, or arena which are designed primarily to be viewed by patrons inside it. (b)

§603(c) continues into General Advertising Signs on transit shelters and advertising kiosks furnished by contract with the Municipal Transportation Agency. That is a street-furniture advertising regime rather than a storefront rule, and the copy on file breaks off inside it, so this page does not cover it.

Source: San Francisco Planning Code, Article 6 — §603 (Exempted Signs), read 30 September 2026. The “including but not limited to” wording is kept because it changes how the list reads. §606 and §607.1 figures are not restated here: this source does not establish which limits belong to which section.

Every other figure on this page is a neighborhood-commercial (NC) district figure; the Mixed Use Districts carry their own sign standards in Planning Code §607.2. Ordinance No. 203-26 (File 260679) amends them. The Mayor approved it, the Legistar record gives its enactment date as 10/2/2026, and it becomes effective on the 31st day after enactment (Section 5), that is, at the start of November 2026.

What the amended §607.2 says

• Identifying signs: one sign per lot, up to 20 sq ft; on lots one-half acre or larger, one sign for each frontage, each up to 100 sq ft. A wall or projecting identifying sign is mounted on the first-story level, except that on lots one-half acre or larger wall and projecting signs may reach 40 ft in height (§607.2(c)(1)).
• Wall business signs in the Chinatown Community Business District, the Eastern Neighborhoods Mixed Use Districts and the Downtown Residential Districts: 3 sq ft per foot of street frontage occupied by the use, or 150 sq ft per street frontage, whichever is less, never covering more than 75% of any wall, and no higher than 24 ft. In the Urban Mixed Use District: 3 sq ft per foot for the first 50 ft of frontage plus 1 sq ft per foot after that, up to 60 ft high (§607.2(f)(3)(B)).
• Mixed Use-Office District south of Townsend Street: one additional wall sign per street frontage, up to 80 sq ft and 80 ft high, projecting no more than 8 inches, built from individual opaque elements and, if lit, halo-lit from behind (§607.2(f)(3)(B)(iii)).
• Projecting business signs in those districts: one per business, or two per business on lots one-half acre or larger, with a combined area of up to 80 sq ft; no higher than 24 ft; projecting no more than 75% of the distance from the street property line to the curb, or 6 ft 6 in, whichever is less (§607.2(f)(3)(C)).

Until the ordinance takes effect, the earlier text applies; the Legislative Digest describes it as one identifying sign per lot up to 20 sq ft and one projecting sign per business up to 32 sq ft.

Source: San Francisco Ordinance No. 203-26, final text and the File 260679 Legislation Details (status Passed, enactment date 10/2/2026), read 10 October 2026.