York County, VA Home Business: Signage Rules (2026)

York County treats a home occupation, a business run out of a residence, as a nonconforming use for signage purposes even where it's a fully permitted home occupation elsewhere in the code. Under the district sign table at Sec. 24.1-703(a), which spells out permitted signs for the RC, RR, R33, R20, R13, R7, RMF, and PD residential districts, a home occupation qualifies for only one small monument or wall sign, and footnote 3 to that table nails the point down directly: home occupations are limited to a single sign, whether freestanding or attached to the wall of the dwelling.

The same row of the table caps that sign at three square feet in area and three feet in height, whichever structural type the owner chooses, a fraction of the 40-square-foot, six-foot allowance available to an ordinary nonresidential use in the same districts. Because it counts as a freestanding sign, that one sign still has to clear the general 10-foot minimum setback from property lines set in Sec. 24.1-702(h), still needs a sign permit under Sec. 24.1-702(b) before it goes up, and cannot be attached to a tree or utility pole under Sec.

24.1-702(g). A homeowner who wants both a small yard sign and a wall placard for the same home business has to pick one; the ordinance does not allow stacking a freestanding sign and a wall sign for a single home occupation.