Rockingham County, VA Sign Regulations: Window Signs (2026)

Sec. 03 lists the signs exempt from permitting in every zoning district; subsection (j) addresses window signage specifically. Signs attached directly to the interior or exterior of the windows of business and industrial uses are exempt from the permit requirement and do not count toward the parcel's cumulative sign area, but only under two conditions written into the same sentence: the signage cannot occupy more than twenty-five percent of the total area of the window in which it is displayed, and it cannot be legible from any street.

Both conditions must be met simultaneously; a small sign that is still legible from the roadway, or a sign under 25 percent that nonetheless faces a street frontage in a way that makes it readable from that street, falls outside the exemption. Because the window-sign exemption sits in the same list as the menu-board exemption in subsection (k) and the identification-board exemption in subsection (n), all of which condition their exemption on not being legible from a street, county staff apply the visibility test the same way across these categories.

A window sign that exceeds the 25 percent cap, or is illuminated in a way not covered by the exemption, is instead measured and counted under the general sign-area rules of Sec. 04.