Construction site safety signs: what ISO 7010 says

ISO 7010 is the international standard for safety pictograms: the same running figure heading for the door, the same hard hat on a blue background, the same yellow triangle, anywhere in the world. The color and shape tell you what kind of sign it is before you even make out the drawing. If you're making signs for a construction site or a warehouse, start from the pictograms in the standard, not from whatever turns up online.

What ISO 7010 is

The current edition is ISO 7010:2019, published in July 2019 and extended since then by amendments that add new signs. The standard sets out safety signs for four purposes: accident prevention, fire protection, health hazard information and emergency evacuation.

Two things matter if you're printing them:

• the shape and color of every sign come from ISO 3864-1, the standard with the design principles for safety signs;
• ISO 7010 provides the sign originals, meant to be scaled for reproduction. You don't redraw them, you use them as they are.

The standard doesn't cover signage for road, rail, river, maritime or air traffic. The road signs around a construction site follow their own rules.

The five families of signs

The EU directive on workplace safety signs also sets proportions: on warning, mandatory, escape and fire signs, the safety color covers at least half of the sign's surface, and on prohibition signs red covers at least 35%.

The logic is easy to remember: red means stop or fire, yellow means caution, blue means you must, green means safety and the way out.

What EU law says

The rules for workplace safety signs come from Directive 92/58/EEC, which Romania wrote into national law with a 2006 government decision. Among other things, the directive requires:

• pictograms that are as simple as possible, with only the essential details;
• signboards made of shock- and weather-resistant material suited to the location;
• mounting at a suitable height and in the line of sight;
• phosphorescent colors, reflective materials or lighting where natural light is poor.

The directive allows pictograms that differ slightly from those in its annex, as long as they convey the same meaning and no adaptation obscures it. That's exactly why ISO 7010 is the safe choice: it's a single, internationally recognized set, and on a site with people from several countries everyone reads the same sign the same way.

How we prepare them for print

1. Official pictograms, scaled correctly. Enlarge or reduce them proportionally, without stretching, added outlines or effects.
2. Size by viewing distance. The directive requires dimensions and colors that make the sign easy to see and understand. A sign read from the far end of a warehouse isn't the same size as one on a site office door.
3. Text below the sign, and short. The pictogram works on its own. Supplementary text goes on an adjacent panel, in the crew's languages, in the same order on every sign.
4. Material to suit the location. Indoors, heavy board or PVC. Outdoors, a rigid material that stands up to water and knocks. For escape routes with poor light, photoluminescent film.
5. A color proof. The red, yellow, blue and green should look like safety colors, not brand shades. Proof them before the full run.

The company logo has a place on the sign, but small, in a corner, away from the symbol. The safety sign is the main message.

For office and retail signage, see also our article on letters, light boxes and decals. What we do in signage is on our signage page, and for construction companies, on our page for businesses.