The short answer is yes. Almost every permanent business sign in Lake County needs a permit. The more useful question is who you need it from, because Lake County has fourteen cities and towns, and each one writes its own sign rules.
First: Are You in a City, or in Unincorporated Lake County?
This trips people up more than anything else. Your mailing address doesn’t tell you who regulates your sign. Plenty of businesses with a Leesburg, Eustis, or Clermont mailing address sit outside city limits, and their permit goes through Lake County. Plenty of others are inside city limits and never deal with the county at all.
Lake County’s municipalities are Astatula, Clermont, Eustis, Fruitland Park, Groveland, Howey-in-the-Hills, Lady Lake, Leesburg, Mascotte, Minneola, Montverde, Mount Dora, Tavares, and Umatilla. If your property is inside one of them, that city’s sign code and building department apply. If it isn’t, Lake County’s Land Development Regulations do.
The fastest way to check is the Lake County Property Appraiser’s parcel search, which lists the jurisdiction for every parcel. We check this on every project before we design anything, because the answer changes how tall the sign can be, how big it can be, and where it can go.
Which Signs Need a Permit?
As a rule, if it’s permanent, structural, or electrical, it needs a permit. That includes:
- Ground and monument signs
- Wall signs, including channel letters and cabinet signs
- Any illuminated sign, which also needs an electrical permit and inspection
- Replacing an existing sign structure, and in many jurisdictions, changing a sign face
The exemptions are narrow. Lake County’s sign code, for example, exempts things like small nameplates, window signs, incidental signs of a few square feet, and certain temporary signs. A new storefront sign or a sign out by the road is not on that list in any jurisdiction we work in.
What Unincorporated Lake County’s Sign Code Requires
If your property falls under the county, Chapter XI of the Lake County Land Development Regulations governs your sign. A few rules shape almost every project:
- Freestanding signs must be ground signs. Pole signs and roof signs are prohibited. The supports have to be concealed, and the enclosed base must be at least half the width of the sign face.
- The base should match the building. In commercial and industrial districts, the code calls for a base that fits the architecture of the main building, such as split-face block, finished metal, brick, or stucco.
- Landscaping is required. Commercial and industrial ground signs need a planted area of at least 100 square feet with shrubs and groundcover.
- Height depends on the road. For a single-tenant commercial ground sign, the published limit is 8 feet on a two-lane road and 12 feet on a four-lane divided road. Allowable sign area steps down from arterial roads to collector roads to internal roads.
- Setbacks. Ground signs generally sit at least 5 feet from the right-of-way and 10 feet from side and rear property lines, and nothing can go in the sight triangle at an intersection.
Codes get amended, and the cities each have their own versions of these rules, so treat these numbers as a starting point rather than a final answer. Confirming the current code for your exact parcel is part of what we do before the first drawing.
What Goes Into a Sign Permit Application
Whether the permit goes to the county or a city, the package usually includes:
- A site plan showing the sign location, property lines, right-of-way, and setbacks
- Sign drawings with dimensions, materials, colors, and the calculated sign area
- Signed and sealed engineering for freestanding signs, showing the structure and foundation meet Florida Building Code wind-load requirements
- Electrical details for illuminated signs, including the circuit and a UL-listed sign
- Landlord approval if you lease, along with the property’s sign criteria
- A licensed contractor of record
In the City of Leesburg, for example, permits are submitted and tracked through the city’s online permitting portal, which is also where inspections are scheduled. The city only accepts application forms marked for the current Florida Building Code (2023, 8th Edition) and the 2020 National Electrical Code, which is a small detail that gets applications bounced.
Not sure which rules apply to your property?
Send us the address. We’ll confirm the jurisdiction, check the sign code, and tell you what’s allowed before you spend a dollar on design.
Who Is Allowed to Pull the Permit?
Florida regulates sign contractors under Chapter 489 of the Florida Statutes. Electrical sign work has to be done under a license that covers it, and a 2024 change to the law made it explicit that the sign specialty category covers non-electrical signs too. In practice, that means the company installing your sign should be the one pulling the permit, and it should hold the license for the work.
Be cautious if anyone suggests you pull an owner-builder permit for a commercial sign, or that a sign can go up first and get permitted later. It puts the liability on you, and it is one of the most common ways businesses end up paying for a sign twice.
Why Permits Get Rejected
Most delays come from a short list of problems:
- The sign is too close to the right-of-way or in the sight triangle
- The sign area was calculated differently than the jurisdiction calculates it
- A pole sign was designed for a jurisdiction that only allows ground signs
- Engineering is missing, or not sealed by a Florida-licensed engineer
- The landlord hasn’t signed off
- The application went to the county when the parcel is inside city limits, or the other way around
Every one of these is avoidable when the jurisdiction and code are confirmed before design starts.
What Happens If You Skip the Permit?
An unpermitted sign can draw a code enforcement case, fines, and an order to remove it. It can also come up when you sell the property, refinance, or renew a lease. And if an unpermitted, unengineered sign fails in a storm, the questions from your insurer get much harder. The permit is a small part of the total cost of a sign, and it protects everything else you spent.
How We Handle Permitting
SignCrafters of Florida has been permitting signs in Lake County since 2006, from our 25,000-square-foot facility in Leesburg. We confirm the jurisdiction, design to the code that actually applies, arrange the engineering, pull the permits under our own license, and schedule the inspections. You don’t have to learn the difference between a collector road and an arterial road to get a sign approved.
Planning a new monument sign or storefront sign in Leesburg, Tavares, Eustis, Clermont, Mount Dora, or anywhere else in Lake County? Contact us and we’ll tell you what your property allows.
