Van Signwriting: What to Put on It (and What to Leave Off)
A signwritten van is the one advert most tradespeople already own and don’t have to pay to run. It sits on driveways, queues at the lights and parks outside the school, and every one of those is somebody looking at it. The trouble is that most vans are written for the person who owns them rather than the person reading them. The reader, sat in the car behind at a red light, has about three seconds and one question: what do they do, and how do I get hold of them?
Design for the reader and the rules become fairly ruthless. Here’s what earns a place on the van, what doesn’t, where it should go, and what you can expect to pay.
What earns its place
Your trade, in plain words. This is the most important thing on the van and the one most often fluffed. “Plumbing & Heating”, “Electrician”, “Roofing”, “Landscaping & Fencing”. If your business is called something clever — Aqua Solutions, Bright Spark, Summit — the name on its own tells a stranger nothing. Put the trade next to it, larger than the name if you have to. Nobody has ever rung a plumber because they admired the pun.
Your business name. Second billing, not top. It matters because it’s what people search for when they want to find you again, so spell it exactly as it appears on your Google Business Profile and your website. Three spellings across the van, the profile and the site is three chances to look like three different businesses.
Your phone number, as large as you can legibly make it. This is what the van is for. A number someone can read from two cars back is worth more than any amount of design. Use the number people actually answer, and make sure it’s the same number on your Google Business Profile and your website — a van that says one thing and Google says another is a small credibility leak every time someone checks.
The area you cover. “Covering Ashford, Folkestone & Romney Marsh” does two jobs. It tells the reader you’re local, which is most of what they want to know, and that you’ll actually come out. A van with no location could be from anywhere, and people assume anywhere means expensive.
Your website address, if it’s short. Here’s the honest bit: a web address on a van only pays off if someone can remember it long enough to type it in later. smithplumbing.co.uk works. smith-plumbing-and-heating-services-kent.co.uk doesn’t, and neither does anything with a hyphen or a spelling someone has to guess at. That’s an argument for choosing a sensible domain in the first place, and if you haven’t got one yet, it’s worth doing before you book the signwriter rather than after.
What to leave off
An email address. Nobody has ever pulled over to type one from a moving van. It clutters the panel and pushes the number smaller. Your website has it; that’s enough.
Social media handles. Same problem. An Instagram handle is fine on a business card. On a van it’s a string of characters competing with your phone number for space, and losing.
A list of twelve services in 20pt. The temptation is to reassure people you do everything. What it actually does is make the van illegible at any distance. Name the trade, and at most two or three headline services — “Boilers · Bathrooms · Emergencies”. The full list lives on your website, where people have time to read it.
Clip-art and stock graphics. A cartoon plumber with a spanner makes you look like every other van that used the same template. Clean lettering on a plain colour reads better and dates far more slowly.
Low-contrast colours. Silver lettering on a white van, pale grey on light blue, anything reflective that disappears in dull weather — which, in the UK, is most weather. Dark on light or light on dark, and test it by standing thirty feet back on a grey afternoon.
| Earns its place | Leave it off |
|---|---|
| Trade, in plain words | Email address |
| Business name, matching Google and the website | Social handles |
| Phone number, largest legible size | Long list of services |
| Towns or area covered | Clip-art and stock graphics |
| Short, memorable web address | Low-contrast or reflective colours |
Where it goes on the van
Rear doors matter most. The back of the van is what the car behind you stares at in traffic, often for minutes at a time. This is where your trade and phone number belong, at their largest. If you only sign one panel, sign this one.
Sides are for car parks and driveways. Someone walking past your van outside a job sees the side. They have longer to look, so the side can carry the area covered, a headline service or two, and the web address.
The front is close to worthless. Nobody reads the bonnet of a van coming towards them. Save the money.
One practical point: if your van is a lease or on finance, check the agreement before anything goes on it. Some leases require signwriting to be removable and the van returned bare, which points you toward vinyl rather than a wrap. And tell your insurer — a signwritten van is a business vehicle, and if your policy doesn’t reflect that, a claim is the wrong moment to find out.
What van signwriting costs in the UK
Prices vary a lot by region, by the size of the van and by who’s doing the work, so treat these as typical figures rather than quotes.
Simple cut-vinyl lettering — trade, name, number and area on the rear and both sides — typically runs somewhere in the region of £150–£500. It’s the best value on the list and, done well, it’s all most one-van businesses need.
Part wraps and printed panels, where a section of the van carries a printed design or photograph, tend to sit around £500–£1,500.
A full wrap, changing the whole colour of the van and covering every panel, is generally £1,500–£3,500 and up, depending on the vehicle and the finish. It looks striking, but it makes the van no easier to read than good lettering does.
London and the South East tend toward the top of those ranges; elsewhere you’ll often do better. Whatever you choose, ask for a proof and judge it at the distance it’ll be seen from, not on a phone screen.
Make the van and the internet agree
The van does one thing very well: it gets someone to notice you and, with luck, remember your name or your number. What happens next is that they search for you. If the name on the van leads to a Google Business Profile with the same name, the same number and a page of recent reviews, the van has done its job. If it leads to nothing, you’ve paid for an advert that sends people to a dead end.
So before the vinyl goes on: one business name, one phone number, one short web address, and the same three on the van, the profile and your website. Our SEO guide for tradesmen covers the rest of getting found once they look.
Here’s where we declare our interest: if the missing piece is the website, we build one from your Google Business Profile — your services, photos, hours and reviews — free, on a free .co.uk domain, live within 48 hours of the domain being registered, with hosting at £24 a month including VAT as the only cost. If you’d like a short, memorable web address that’s actually worth putting on the van, claim your free website and we’ll register the domain for you.