Bloomington, IL Home Business: Signage Rules (2026)

A(5) states plainly that no sign shall be permitted for the business associated with a home occupation. That single sentence sits inside the same twelve-part list of restrictions that governs every home-based business allowed in the city's Agricultural (A) and Residential (R) Districts, alongside the requirement that the home occupation not be apparent beyond the boundaries of the site. Read together, the two provisions mean a home business in Bloomington has to stay invisible from the street: no sign, no special outside entrance, and no outdoor storage outside the Agricultural District.

This is a stricter standard than the sign rules that apply to commercial properties, where the city's Advertising Sign Code in Chapter 3 permits regulated signage by district and use. A home occupation does not get any of that allowance; the zoning code's home-occupation section overrides it and zeroes out signage for any business run from a house or its accessory building. A(5). A property owner who wants visible signage for a business has to locate that business in a commercially zoned district and comply with Chapter 3 instead, since staying in a home occupation forecloses signage entirely.