Knoxville, TN Home Business: Signage Rules (2026)

Article 13, Section 13.9 of Knoxville's zoning code sets sign standards district by district, and Section 13.9.D covers the city's residential districts: EN and RN-1 through RN-7. Item D.1.a is the specific rule for home-based businesses: 'For properly approved home occupations, one wall sign with a maximum sign area of two square feet. Such signs cannot be illuminated.' That's the entire sign allowance for a home occupation, one sign, two square feet, no internal or external illumination, and it only applies once the home occupation itself has been approved under the zoning code's home occupation standards.

The same subsection shows how much more sign area other residential uses get by comparison: item D.1.b allows multi-family buildings, rooming and boarding houses, and fraternity or sorority houses up to nine square feet of wall signage that may be externally (but not internally) illuminated, and item D.1.c allows monument or column signs up to 36 square feet and six feet tall for larger multi-family sites, mobile home parks, and subdivisions with more than 25 lots. A home occupation's two-square-foot, unlit wall sign sits well below every other sign allowance in a Knoxville residential district, reflecting the code's approach of treating a home business as incidental to the residential use of the property rather than as a standalone commercial use.