Island County, WA Sign Regulations: Garage Sale Signs (2026)

040, defines a 'sign, special event or temporary' to include signs advertising private sales of personal property such as house sales, garage sales and rummage sales, built of light materials such as cloth, canvas, plywood or similar. p then sets the operative rule: these signs are allowed for periods not to exceed 30 calendar days, after which they must be removed, and not for more than one 30-day period in any calendar year, and all special event and temporary signs are required to obtain a temporary sign permit to verify and monitor those time restrictions.

That means a homeowner advertising a garage sale needs a temporary sign permit before posting the sign, cannot leave it up longer than 30 days, and cannot rely on the exemption a second time in the same calendar year if the display already used its one allotted 30-day window. The same category covers other short-term community advertising, such as picnics, carnivals, bazaars, craft shows and Christmas tree sales, so a household that posts a garage sale sign and later wants to advertise a separate rummage sale in the same year could run into the one-period-per-year limit. j.