DE Signs North East has been manufacturing and installing signs for Durham businesses for over 45 years. From shop fronts to vehicle wraps, illuminated signs to 3D built-up letters, every sign is designed, manufactured, and installed by our team at Blaydon — just 15 miles from Durham town centre.
From the heritage shopfronts on Saddler Street and Silver Street to the business parks at Belmont and Bowburn, Durham blends historic charm with modern enterprise — and the signage needs to reflect both.
We cover Durham city centre, Framwellgate Moor, Belmont, Gilesgate, Nevilles Cross, Brandon, Bowburn, Coxhoe, and Sacriston. Whether you need a single fascia sign for a high street shop or a full rebrand across multiple sites, we deliver the same family-run quality that has kept North East businesses coming back since 1978.
Postcodes we cover: DH1, DH2, DH3, DH6, DH7, DH8. Call 0800 2888004 for a free quote.
Fascia signs, projecting signs, and illuminated shopfront signage for Durham retailers. From 3mm aluminium composite panels to traditional hanging signs, we manufacture signs that suit both modern and heritage shopfronts on Saddler Street, Silver Street, and North Road. View our shop front sign services →
Van wraps, fleet branding, and vehicle lettering for Durham trades and businesses. Whether you operate from Belmont Business Park or the city centre, we turn your vehicles into mobile billboards. Explore vehicle graphics →
LED illuminated signs, light boxes, and halo-lit lettering for Durham businesses that want to be visible day and night. Popular for restaurants and bars around the city centre and Millburngate. See illuminated sign options →
Custom glass and LED neon signs for bars, restaurants, and retail. Perfect for the vibrant hospitality scene around Wharton Road and Walkergate. Discover neon signage →
Premium 3D acrylic and metal letters for reception walls, shopfronts, and corporate interiors. A popular choice for Durham University departments and businesses at Greenbelt and Belmont. View 3D letter options →
PVC banners, Foamex boards, and exhibition graphics for events, promotions, and point-of-sale across Durham. See large format printing →
Recent projects made in-house at Blaydon and installed across County Durham.
Family-run since 1978. Three generations of sign-making expertise serving the North East.
All signs are designed, manufactured, and finished in our workshop. No outsourcing, no delays.
We come to your premises, measure up, and provide a fixed-price quote with no obligation.
Most projects completed within 2-3 weeks. Rush jobs available. We keep your business visible.
Durham County Council requires careful consideration for signs in the Durham World Heritage Site and conservation areas around the Cathedral and Castle. We have experience navigating these requirements and can advise you on what listed building consent involves.
Genuine reviews from North East businesses we have made signs for - collected via Google, Yell and our own website.
Yes. We cover all of Durham including the city centre, Framwellgate Moor, Belmont, Gilesgate, Nevilles Cross, Brandon, Bowburn, Coxhoe, and Sacriston. We are based 15 miles away in Blaydon.
A standard fascia sign starts from £450. Illuminated signs start from £450. 3D built-up letters start from £100 per letter. All prices include VAT, design, manufacturing, and installation. Call 0800 2888004 for a free quote.
Signs within the Durham World Heritage Site or conservation areas around the Cathedral require special consent from Durham County Council. We have experience with heritage signage and can advise you on what's required for listed building consent.
Most projects are completed within 2-3 weeks from sign-off. Heritage signs may take longer due to consent requirements. Rush jobs are available for non-listed buildings.
Yes. We have experience producing signage for educational and institutional buildings. We understand the specific requirements for university campuses, including wayfinding and departmental signage.
Durham city centre mixes a UNESCO World Heritage core around the Cathedral and Castle with busy shopping streets around the Market Place and Prince Bishops. That contrast shapes the fascia work we do here: retailers on Saddler Street and Silver Street usually want slim, traditionally styled fascia signs in painted aluminium or brushed acrylic that sit comfortably against historic stone, while units on Claypath and Saddler Street's commercial stretch go for bold full-colour fascias with built-in illumination. Every fascia starts with a free site survey so we can measure up, photograph the elevation and flag anything the conservation team at Durham County Council may want to discuss before installation. For a fuller breakdown of styles and costs, see our fascia and shop front signs service page.
Durham has a deep pool of trades and services, from plumbers and electricians working the DH1 postcodes to contractors serving the university estates and the business parks around Belmont and Bowburn. A professionally wrapped van is a moving advert on the A690 and the inner ring road, so we fit a steady stream of part and full van wraps and lettering-only vehicle graphics for Durham-based firms. Lettering keeps costs down for sole traders; full wraps suit firms that want the whole van working as a billboard. Because everything is printed and finished in-house in Blaydon, a Durham van is usually wrapped within days of artwork sign-off, not weeks.
Durham's hospitality scene runs on visibility after dark. Restaurants, bars and coffee shops around the Market Place and on the walk down to the river ask us for LED-lit fascias and projecting signs that keep working through the long winter evenings, while neon-style LED signs are a popular choice for bar interiors and window displays. Inside, offices and practices around the city use cut acrylic letters for reception walls. LED systems run cool, sip electricity compared with old fluorescent tubes, and the lamps we use are rated for tens of thousands of hours.
Durham's year is full of short-term signage needs: graduation season around the university, market days on the Market Place, school fairs and seasonal promotions. We print banners, boards and large-format print on weatherproof materials that survive North East weather, and supply pavement signs and A-boards for shops that want to pull footfall off the street. Event signage, estate agent boards and construction site boards all come from the same in-house workshop, with turnaround sized to your date rather than our convenience.
From our workshop in Blaydon, sign installation in Durham city usually takes around 40 minutes door to door, which is why we can offer free site surveys across the whole DH postcode area. We regularly fit signs in Framwellgate Moor, Belmont, Gilesgate, Nevilles Cross, Brandon, Ushaw Moor, Sacriston, Coxhoe and Bowburn, and we also cover the surrounding County Durham towns including Stockton, Middlesbrough and Teesside. If your business sits in a village or an estate off the main roads, just ask — our surveyors plan routes to suit the job, not the other way round.
Yes. If an existing shop sign in Durham is structurally sound but tired — faded acrylic, failing tubes, weathered paint — we can re-face or re-lamp it rather than replace it, which often costs a fraction of a new build. We can also visit annually to check fixings, electrics and seals. Ask us to look at your existing sign during the free site survey and we will give you an honest repair-or-replace recommendation.
Durham's World Heritage setting means the streets around the Cathedral, Palace Green and Saddler Street carry some of the strictest shopfront expectations in the North East. The good news for business owners: that is a commercial advantage as much as a constraint. A well-made, traditionally styled fascia in a hand-painted finish or brushed metal reads as premium before a customer even sees your products. We design Durham fascias to sit flush and tidy against the stonework, with fixings planned so nothing needs to be cut into historic fabric unnecessarily.
Materials matter here. Powder-coated aluminium frames and vacuum-formed or flat-cut acrylic faces give a crisp, long-life finish in the colours your brand needs, while timber-faced fascias suit pubs, restaurants and shops on the historic streets. Illumination is usually discreet: LED trough lights above a fascia, halo-lit built-up letters or an internally lit projecting sign rather than a fully glowing fascia. The LED sources we use are dim and warmth adjustable, so night-time impact is achieved without lighting the whole street.
Because Durham City centre sits inside a conservation area with the County Hall planning team close by, we will tell you early in the process whether your shopfront project is likely to need advertisement consent or listed building consent, and we prepare the elevation drawings and specifications councils ask for. Most fascia replacements on existing shopfronts are straightforward; the cases that need care are ones that change the character of the frontage, and those benefit from exactly the kind of drawings and material specification we provide as standard.
Further out, the rules relax and the practical demands of an exposed hilltop climate take over. Units on the Belmont and Sniper Park industrial estates need signs that shrug off driving rain and winter grit; retail units in Framwellgate Moor and Neville's Cross want clean, bright and replaceable window vinyl to keep pace with promotions. Because we make everything in-house, replacing a panel next season is a quick re-print rather than a whole new sign.
Yes — we regularly work on signage for education settings, from departmental door signs and wayfinding to display banners for college events. University work tends to need fixed schedules and discreet, durable styling, which suits our in-house manufacturing: we control the timeline from artwork to fitting, so term dates are respected.
If a fascia light fails, electrics trip or a sign is damaged, we can usually get a surveyor out within a day or two and carry out the repair on the same visit where parts allow. For full replacements, once artwork is approved the typical build-and-fit window is a couple of weeks — faster for flat panels, lettering and banners.
Call us on 0800 2888004 or fill in our contact form for a free, no-obligation quote. We cover all of Durham and the surrounding areas.
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