Joliet, IL Sign Regulations: Garage Sale Signs (2026)

Section 8-472 defines a 'directional sign' as an off-site temporary sign erected to direct pedestrian and vehicular traffic to a temporary special event, expressly including garage sales (defined there as any casual sale of tangible personal property in a residential district, also called a lawn, yard, apartment, moving, or estate sale), along with carnivals, real estate open houses and auctions. To qualify, the sign can be up for no more than three continuous days and can't exceed four feet in any one dimension or sixteen square feet in total area, and it can't carry streamers, pennants, flags or balloons.

Section 8-475(c) exempts directional signs, along with civic flags, political signs and 501(c)(3) event signs, from the temporary-sign permit division entirely, on one condition: they can't be placed in the public right-of-way or on public property. Section 8-472's separate definition of 'right-of-way temporary sign' spells out why that condition matters: only public utility or governmental essential-service signs are allowed in the public right-of-way at all, so a garage sale sign staked in the parkway or median is not merely unpermitted, it's categorically barred there.

A sign that runs longer than three days, is bigger than the 4-foot/16-square-foot cap, or carries prohibited add-ons no longer qualifies as an exempt directional sign. At that point it falls under the general temporary sign rules in § 8-473, which require a permit, a $50 application fee per sign under § 8-476(a), and a maximum 30-day posting period.