Troy, MI Sign Regulations: Window Signs (2026)

Troy's sign code does not give window signs a stand-alone size cap everywhere in the city; instead, for the BB Big Beaver, MR Maple Road, and NN Neighborhood Node districts, Sec. 85.02.05(C)(6)(d) says interior or exterior signs, including any affixed to windows, must comply with the Transparency Requirements written into the Zoning Ordinance's Ground Story Activation standards for those districts. Those standards require the first floor of any front facade facing a right-of-way to be no less than 50 percent windows and doors, and facades facing a side street, side yard, or parking area to be no less than 30 percent windows and doors, measured between two and eight feet above the first-floor elevation. In a multi-tenant building, each individual suite has to meet that minimum on its own, not just the building as a whole.

Because a window sign is measured against that transparency floor rather than against a flat square-footage limit, a large sign or heavy window film covering most of a storefront's glass in one of these three districts can put the tenant's frontage below the required percentage, which is the practical limit on window signage there. The Zoning Ordinance does allow a wall-design alternative to offset up to half of a side-yard or parking-lot transparency requirement, but that substitution runs through the building's architecture, not through signage. Outside the BB, MR, and NN districts, window signs are instead controlled through the general wall-sign area cap of 10 percent of a tenant's frontage that applies in those other districts, rather than through this transparency cross-reference.