Every cycle, somebody running for school board or city council calls and asks how many yard signs they need. The honest answer is that it depends on the district, but there’s a way to arrive at a number that isn’t a guess, and there are a couple of things worth knowing before you spend a chunk of the budget on cardboard.
Start with supporters, not with the district
Yard signs go on lawns, and lawns belong to people who have already agreed to support you. So the ceiling on your sign order is not the size of the district. It’s the number of households who will say yes when asked. Ordering 500 signs when you have 120 committed households means 380 signs in somebody’s garage until November.
The practical method: count your confirmed yes-list, add the high-visibility placements you’ve specifically arranged (busy corners, business frontages, supporters on arterial streets), and add a modest reserve for replacements. Signs disappear, blow over, and get damaged, and you will need some in reserve. That total is your first order.
Order in waves, not all at once
First-time campaigns usually order everything in one go and regret it. Two smaller runs work better:
Wave one covers your committed list and the placements you already have permission for. It goes out early enough to matter and tells you how fast signs actually move.
Wave two lands three to four weeks out, when name recognition matters most and when you’ll know exactly how many you’re short. Your artwork is already on file with us at that point, so wave two is a phone call.
The exception is a race where volume pricing on a single large run genuinely beats two smaller ones. Ask. We’ll tell you where the break is rather than letting you find out afterward.
What they cost
Coroplast is posted at $9 per square foot. The standard 18×24 inch sign is 3 square feet, so about $27 each at the retail rate, and a genuine campaign run prices better per piece than that. Call with your real quantity instead of multiplying the single-sign number; that’s the whole reason to call.
Two cost decisions worth making deliberately:
Single- or double-sided. On a corner lot or anywhere traffic passes in both directions, double-sided is not a luxury: a one-sided sign is invisible to half your audience. On a sign flat against a fence, it’s wasted money.
Stakes. They’re inexpensive and separate. Order them with the signs. Every cycle somebody picks up 200 signs and has to come back for stakes.
The disclosure line
California requires campaign advertising by committees to carry the proper “Paid for by” disclosure, and the rules on wording, size and placement come from the FPPC, not from your printer. We print it correctly and size it properly, but the exact committee name and language should come from your treasurer or counsel, not from a template.
Get this right the first time. A reprint three weeks before an election is the most expensive kind of reprint there is.
Placement rules are a real thing
Private property with the owner’s permission is straightforward. Medians, sidewalks, utility poles, and public rights-of-way are not. Most jurisdictions restrict them, and many have specific removal deadlines after election day with penalties attached. Rules differ between the City of Sacramento, the county, and every neighboring city.
Check with the jurisdiction before you place, not after you get a call about it. We print what you need; where it can legally go is worth ten minutes on the phone with the city.
Beyond yard signs
Most local campaigns need more than lawn signs: a banner for the campaign office or events ($6 per square foot: a 3×8 is $144), rally and press-conference signage, palm cards and door hangers, and volunteer shirts from $15. Ordering it together means one setup, one proof round, and one file on record for the runoff.
And yes: the 10:00 AM same-day cutoff applies to campaign work like everything else, which becomes very relevant in the last two weeks. More on campaign printing here.