Everett, WA Home Business: Signage Rules (2026)

' There is no size, lighting or window-sign carve-out, unlike Everett's general commercial sign standards elsewhere in the code; a home occupation gets no sign allowance at all. The ban reinforces subsection (A)(5), which requires the occupation to be conducted so that it gives no outward appearance of a business and manifests no characteristics of a business, and subsection (A)(1)'s requirement that work-space access run through the dwelling rather than a separate outside entrance in most cases. Read together, the section is built to keep a home occupation invisible from the public right-of-way: no sign identifying the business, no outward business appearance, and, for occupations sited in the principal dwelling, no direct outside access to the workspace.

Subsection (A)(13) makes clear the home-occupation permission does not exempt the operator from any other local, state or federal regulation pertinent to the activity, so a business that also needs a state professional license or other posted notice must still comply with those separate requirements even though it cannot post a sign advertising itself. Subsection (B) still requires the operator to register the business with the city treasurer's office and pay the city business and occupations tax, so the no-sign rule sits alongside a registration duty rather than replacing it; the two provisions work together to let city staff track home occupations administratively without allowing street-visible advertising.