Craven County, NC Sign Regulations: Freeway-Facing Signs (2026)

Article VII's off-premises sign regulations set the size, height, spacing, and setback envelope for any billboard visible from a public road in unincorporated Craven County. Under section 208, an off-premises sign cannot exceed 378 square feet per directional flow of traffic, and height is capped at 40 feet measured from the crown of the road. Spacing rules keep billboards from clustering: the minimum distance between any two sign structures is 2,500 linear feet on the same side of the same street, and a sign cannot sit within a 200-foot radius of a school, public park, or bridge, within 250 feet of any intersection, or within a 100-foot radius of residentially zoned property belonging to one of the county's municipalities.

Setbacks scale with sign size: a sign of up to 190 square feet per face needs at least a ten-foot setback from the right-of-way, while a larger sign, up to the 378-square-foot cap, needs at least 20 feet. All of these standards apply on top of the general off-premises sign permit process in section 204, which requires a plot plan showing setbacks, right-of-way lines, and the distance to the nearest existing off-premises sign before the Planning Director will issue a sign permit.