Asheville, NC Home Business: Signage Rules (2026)

Sec. 7-13-4(b) governs on-premises signs for single-tenant development, and subsection (b)(1) covers signage for the city's residential zoning districts: RS-2, RS-4, RS-8, RM-6, RM-8, and RM-16. Within that residential framework, item (b) sets the general nonresidential sign allowance at 15 square feet per face with two faces per sign, but that allowance explicitly excludes home occupation signs, which get their own, much smaller carve-out in item (e): attached home occupation signs shall not exceed one square foot per face, with no more than two faces per sign, and shall not be illuminated.

That single sentence controls every home-based business in an Asheville residential district, from a hairstylist to a bookkeeping practice, capping the visible signage to a plaque-sized area attached to the building, with internal or external illumination off the table entirely. The word attached in item (e) matters: the code frames the home occupation allowance as a sign fastened to the structure itself, not a freestanding pole or ground sign, which residential home occupations do not otherwise get under this article. Because the one-square-foot cap sits inside Sec.

7-13-4(b)(1), it applies specifically to home occupations operating in a residential zoning district; a home-based business in a nonresidential district would instead fall under the separate signage rules for nonresidential zoning set out later in the same section.