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I had already been working as a sign writer for a sign company since 1989, mostly making traditional pub signs, shop facias, vehicle livery and traffic signs. I set up Yoursigns Ltd. after Julie - my wife, came up with the brilliant idea of making reflective house signs.

In early 1995 we had  just  moved house to a wonderful sleepy village by the Sussex coast where most houses did not have house numbers - just house names and all the street lighting was switched off at midnight. Our house was called simply ‘The Warren’. I used my sign making skills to make us a brand new hardwood sign for the house. I routed out the house name in 3.5 inch ‘V’ grooved letters and gave them a gold leaf finish. The sign was also lit up by an automatic security light that turns on when someone walks up the drive.

One dark December evening we had to call out the Doctor urgently for our youngest son - According to the Doctor, he could not find our house and had to drive up and down the road shining his flashlight looking for our house name for 20 minutes before he finally found us.

The Doctor complained bitterly whilst examining our son that he wasted a lot of valuable time trying to locate our house and that this is a common problem for him during hours of darkness. He said that normal house numbers are difficult to see from a car at night - let alone properties with just house names. He also mentioned that the 999 Emergency Response Services have the same problem finding houses in the dark and that the consequences of them not finding my address at night could be a matter of life and death!

On leaving, the Doctor suggested I make my house name more visible in case I need to call him out again. -So much for my elegant gold leaf wooden plaque, it could not be seen from the road at night and as the security light only comes on when you are walking up the path it could not be seen from the road.

That’s when Julie came up with the clever idea of making a reflective house sign for our home - just in case a Doctor had to be called out again or in case of any other emergencies.

I got straight to it and made us a wooden house name sign with white reflective lettering from the same material we used to make traffic signs at work. - It wasn’t long before my neighbours noticed our house name shining up at night and started to order reflective signs for their own homes. I soon realised the potential in making reflective house number & name signs as a business and set up this company.

From those small beginnings in 1995 we have now grown to be the major UK manufacturer of custom made reflective house signs, employing specialist sign makers & sign artists to enable us to offer a wide range of quality reflective house signs.

Originally we made signs from hardwood, but I soon found that the wooden signs needed to be re-varnished every two to three years to keep them from deteriorating - so I looked for a more durable alternative that would need no maintenance. After testing ceramics, cast iron, plastics & reconstituted slate I decided on reconstituted slate  because of its superb hand casting qualities, outdoor durability and inert characteristics that allows us to decorate the plaques with modern long lasting paints.

With reconstituted slate we can produce high quality house signs that look like cast iron but will never rust, - they can be hand painted with fine detail like ceramics, yet are completely frost proof. We can spray paint them with a variety of coloured backgrounds giving customers a choice and they readily accept the heat laminating process used to permanently adhere the reflective text and numbers without deterioration or distortion.

We prefer to keep the actual details of our seven stage manufacturing process and the materials used to ourselves, so that competitors wont be able to simply copy our quality process.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this short article click here to continue looking through this site - Kind Regards, Gerry