The sign that keeps working after dark — which, in this city, is most of the winter afternoon.
A light box is the sign that keeps working after the sun goes down. In Vancouver that is not a small detail — from November to February it is dark by half past four in the afternoon, and for a large part of your trading day an unlit sign is a grey rectangle. A lit one is still selling.
Caspian Signs & Graphics builds and installs light boxes and illuminated signs for businesses in Vancouver, Burnaby, North Vancouver and across British Columbia. The cabinets, faces and letters are made in our own shop, which means the box is built to your storefront instead of being ordered in a standard size and made to fit.
Light boxes are quoted per sign. The main drivers are the size of the cabinet, how the face is made, and whether this is a new installation or a retrofit of a box you already have.
Send us a photo of the storefront with the dimensions of the space the sign has to fit, and we will come back with a quote that separates the cabinet, the face, the LEDs, installation and — where one applies — the permit work.
| Size | The cabinet and the LED count both scale with the face area. |
|---|---|
| Single or double sided | A projecting double-sided box is two faces and more LEDs than a flush-mounted single-sided one. |
| Face construction | A printed translucent face is the least expensive. Routed metal with push-through acrylic letters costs more and looks far better. |
| Cabinet material | Extruded aluminum, fabricated aluminum and stainless are priced differently and last differently outdoors. |
| New or retrofit | Re-lamping and refacing an existing cabinet is usually a fraction of the cost of a new sign. |
| Electrical | Whether power is already at the sign location, and whether a separate electrical permit and an electrician are needed. |
| Access & mounting | Storefront height over a sidewalk is routine. Higher, or over a lane, needs a lift and a closure. |
We installed a hanging light box in Chinatown, alongside window graphics and 3D letters in the area. Two things shaped that job. Chinatown is a designated historic area with its own schedule in the Sign By-law, so what is permitted there is not the same as on an ordinary commercial street. And bilingual copy is normal here, which on a lit face has to be planned from the start — English and Chinese need different amounts of room, and a second language added after the face is routed means a new face.
We installed a light box here along with window graphics. This is close to the water, and salt air is hard on sign hardware. Fixings corrode, and a cabinet that is not sealed properly takes in moisture, which is how LEDs fail early. Sealed cabinets and corrosion-resistant hardware are not an upgrade in that part of the city, they are the baseline.
Light box, window graphics and 3D letters on Hastings. This stretch is read from a moving car as much as on foot, which changes the brief: fewer words, bigger letters, and enough brightness and contrast that the sign still registers at speed in the rain. A busy face that would be fine on a walking street disappears here.
| Chinatown | Bilingual faces, hanging and projecting boxes, historic-area rules on illumination. Plan both languages into the layout from the start. |
|---|---|
| Gastown | Plastic faces are not permitted under the historic-area schedule, so a standard acrylic box is out. Push-through letters in a metal face, or halo-lit letters, are the way to get light into a Gastown sign. |
| Jericho, Kitsilano & the waterfront | Salt air. Sealed cabinets, corrosion-resistant hardware, and gaskets that are actually doing something. |
| Hastings, Burnaby Heights | Read from a car. Bigger type, stronger contrast, fewer words. |
| Main Street & Commercial Drive | Walking streets with narrow frontages. Double-sided projecting boxes earn their keep. |
| Downtown & Robson | Tight storefronts, building management approval on top of the city permit, and installs scheduled outside trading hours. |
| Richmond & No. 3 Road | Bilingual as standard, and larger faces suited to wider frontages and car traffic. |
| Metrotown & Brentwood | Mall and tower retail, where the landlord’s sign criteria usually set the size, depth and brightness before the city does. |
Most of the tired light boxes around the city are not broken, they are old technology. A cabinet built for fluorescent tubes has a few long lamps behind the face, and as those lamps age they dim unevenly and go pink. The sign ends up patchy, dull and visibly past it — which is not a good look to project onto your business every evening.
Modern LED modules are laid out in a grid across the inside of the cabinet, which gives even light across the whole face with no bright bands and no dark corners. They draw far less power, they last for years rather than months, and they do not shift colour as they age. The spacing matters: too few modules and you get hot spots through the face, especially on a shallow cabinet. We lay them out for the depth of your box rather than to a standard rule.
If you already have a cabinet in reasonable condition, a retrofit — new LEDs, new power supply, new face — usually costs a fraction of a new sign and the result is indistinguishable. It is worth asking about before you replace the whole thing.
A printed acrylic face is the standard light box, and from a distance it is fine. Up close it reads as a plastic panel with light behind it, because that is what it is.
A push-through sign works the other way round. The face is solid metal, routed out in the shape of your letters, and acrylic letters are pushed through from behind so they stand slightly proud of the surface. By day you see crisp metal with dimensional letters sitting in it. By night the letters glow and the background stays solid and dark. It costs more than a printed face and it looks like a different class of sign — and because the visible face is metal rather than plastic, it is also an answer in the historic areas where plastic faces are not permitted.
An illuminated sign normally needs a sign permit, and because it is wired it may also need a separate electrical permit and a licensed electrician to make the final connection. If the box projects over the sidewalk, that is handled differently again from a sign flat on your wall. In the historic areas there are additional restrictions on how a sign may be lit.
We check what applies to your address before anything is designed, prepare the drawings and submit the application — see our sign permit service. Getting the order right matters here: a lit sign designed first and checked second is the one that gets rebuilt.
Usually yes, and it is the first thing to ask about. If the cabinet is sound, new LEDs, a new power supply and a new face give you a sign that looks new for a fraction of the cost of replacing it.
Almost always old fluorescent tubes. They dim unevenly and shift colour as they age. LED modules laid out across the cabinet fix both problems and use much less power.
Acrylic letters pushed through a routed metal face so they stand slightly proud. By day you see metal with dimensional letters; at night the letters glow and the background stays dark. It is the best-looking version of a light box, and it is also an option where plastic faces are not permitted.
Not a standard plastic-faced one — the historic-area schedule does not permit plastic faces there. Push-through letters in a metal face, or halo-lit letters, are how you get an illuminated sign that works in Gastown.
An illuminated sign may need a separate electrical permit in addition to the sign permit, and the final connection is made by a licensed electrician. We coordinate that as part of the job.
If the sign sits flat on the wall above your door, single-sided. If it projects out over the sidewalk so people walking in both directions can read it, double-sided. On a walking street the double-sided projecting box is usually the one that gets you found.
A tensioned printed fabric face in an aluminum frame, with no visible fixings and a very flat, even look. The graphic can be swapped out later without touching the frame, so it suits anything that changes seasonally.
Years rather than months, and far longer than the fluorescent tubes they replaced. Outdoors, what usually ends a sign’s life first is water getting into a cabinet that was not sealed properly — which is why we care about the gaskets as much as the lighting.
Across Greater Vancouver — Chinatown, Gastown, downtown and Robson, Main Street, Commercial Drive, Kitsilano and Jericho, Mount Pleasant and the Broadway corridor, Richmond, North Vancouver, and Burnaby including the Heights on Hastings, Metrotown and Brentwood.
We build face-lit and push-through light boxes, edge-lit panels, fabric light boxes, halo-lit letters and double-sided projecting signs for storefronts, restaurants and offices across Vancouver, Burnaby, North Vancouver and the rest of British Columbia — new builds and retrofits both.
Caspian Signs & Graphics carries liability insurance and WorkSafeBC coverage, so your project is protected from start to finish.
Or call +1 236-591-3235 — we answer during shop hours.
Also see: Hanging & Blade Signs | Channel Letters | 3D Letters | Window Graphics | Sign Permits | Sign Shop in Vancouver, BC | Sign Shop in Burnaby, BC