AS 1319 Safety Signs — Complete Australian Compliance Guide

The six classes of AS 1319 sign

AS 1319 sorts workplace safety signs into six visual classes. The shape, colour, and pictogram geometry are fixed by the Standard — you cannot invent new ones and still be compliant. What changes between jobs is the wording below the pictogram and the size of the sign itself.

Sizing a sign by viewing distance

AS 1319 doesn't prescribe an exact minimum size for every sign — it prescribes that the sign must be visible and legible at the distance from which it's expected to be read. Appendix B of the Standard provides guidance on character height vs viewing distance, and Australian manufacturers have converged on a practical size ladder that covers almost every workplace scenario.

The 300 × 450mm size is the most common single size across Australian workplaces — it suits almost every indoor fence, door and wall application. 225 × 300mm is the default for amenity blocks, offices and close-range doors. 450 × 600mm and 600 × 900mm are site-boundary and factory-floor sizes. Larger than 600 × 900mm is usually a custom hoarding or multi-PPE board rather than a single AS 1319 sign.

Pictogram geometry — what auditors actually check

AS 1319 is specific about pictogram geometry inside each sign. The diagonal bar on a prohibition sign must cross the pictogram at 45 degrees from upper-left to lower-right, with a stroke width of 1/8 of the circle diameter. A mandatory-sign disc must fill at least 50 percent of the sign face. A danger-sign red oval must be at least 20 percent of the sign height. These proportions aren't suggestions — they're the most common audit failure we see on signs that buyers produced in-house or bought from non-specialist retailers.

Every sign we manufacture at Platinum Signs uses master artwork proofed against AS 1319 proportions. You'll never get a compliance gap from the pictogram layer on a Platinum Signs sign — only from the wording, placement, or material class choices, which are your calls to make for your specific site.

Materials — matching the sign to its environment

AS 1319 doesn't specify a material — the Standard cares about legibility, colour fastness, and durability for the intended lifespan. In practice, Australian workplaces use five material classes depending on where the sign is installed and how long it needs to last. The list below is what we manufacture and what our site sells as pre-printed stock. Custom print-on-demand is available on anything outside this set.

Placement rules

• Install signs at the point of hazard or immediately before entering it — not 20 metres upstream where workers will have forgotten by the time they reach the hazard.
• Mount signs at approximately 1.5–1.8 m to the centre of the sign for standing-height viewing. Lower for seated plant operators, higher for overhead-door warnings.
• Avoid mounting multiple conflicting classes on one panel — a danger sign and a prohibition sign on the same backing dilutes both. Use separate signs, vertically stacked with 50mm clear space.
• Replace faded, graffiti-damaged or peeling signs immediately. A non-legible safety sign is legally equivalent to no sign at all, and insurers have denied claims on this basis.
• Keep a site register of installed signs — the date installed, the material class, and the scheduled replacement date. This is what a WHS auditor asks for first.

Common compliance failures

After manufacturing hundreds of thousands of AS 1319 signs for Australian workplaces, the failures we see on audit reports are consistent — and almost all of them are preventable at the specification stage, not the manufacturing stage.

• Wrong colour system — 'warning yellow' that's actually signal yellow, or 'safety red' that's actually fire red. Our master artwork uses the exact CMYK + RAL specifications from AS 1319 Appendix A.
• Sign too small for the viewing distance. A 225 × 300mm sign on a 15-metre-wide warehouse aisle is unreadable at working pace — bump to 450 × 600mm minimum.
• Inappropriate material — polypropylene signs left outdoors for two years and now chalky and unreadable. Use colorbond or aluminium for any outdoor mount expected to last past 18 months.
• Wording that contradicts the pictogram — a hard-hat mandatory disc with wording that says 'Hard hats optional in this area'. The pictogram rules; the wording must support it, not override it.
• Too many signs clustered together — 'sign blindness' is real. If an entry point has more than three AS 1319 signs, consolidate into a single multi-PPE construction entry board.

How Platinum Signs manufactures to AS 1319

Every pre-printed safety sign in our shop is drawn from a master library that's been proofed against AS 1319:1994 Appendix A (colour), Appendix B (dimensions), and the pictogram geometry rules in the main body of the Standard. Printing is UV-direct on the large-format roll-fed press (vinyl) and large-format UV flatbed (rigid substrates), which means the colour system doesn't fade the way solvent-printed signs did in the 2000s. Material thicknesses match the table above — we don't quietly substitute 1.2mm aluminium for 1.6mm, or 3mm corflute for 5mm, because the difference matters for both lifespan and compliance.

Bulk pricing applies at 5, 10, 25, 50 and 100+ unit thresholds, with savings up to 40 percent at the top tier — which is where most construction site-pack, multi-site council and facilities-manager orders land. Delivered Australia-wide applies above $150 in Sydney metro, and interstate freight is live-quoted through Transdirect at checkout.

Related Australian Standards

• AS 1319:1994 — Safety Signs for the Occupational Environment (this guide). The foundation for all workplace safety signage.
• AS 1742 series — Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices. Covers STOP, GIVE WAY, NO ENTRY and other road/traffic signs. Different colour/shape rules.
• AS 2293 series — Emergency escape lighting and exit signs. Overlaps with AS 1319 'safe condition' class for exit signage but adds photoluminescent and electrically-illuminated requirements.
• AS/NZS 1906.1:2017 — Retroreflective sheeting. Specifies Class 1, Class 2 and Class 400 reflective materials. Referenced by AS 1742 and NHVR rules; optional for AS 1319 workplace signs.
• AS 4001 — Rear marker plates. Mandatory for heavy vehicles; uses reflective aluminium per AS/NZS 1906.1.
• GHS (Globally Harmonised System) — Chemical hazard labelling. Distinct from AS 1319 — governs chemical container labels, Safety Data Sheets and hazchem workplace signs.

Frequently asked

Is AS 1319 legally mandatory?

AS 1319 is not a law by itself — it's a Standard. But it's referenced by every Australian WHS regulator as the benchmark for safety sign compliance, and a WHS inspector finding non-AS-1319 signs on site will treat that as a failure of the duty of care under the WHS Act. In practice, all workplace safety signs in Australia are manufactured to AS 1319 because any other path exposes the PCBU to liability.

Can I mix AS 1319 and ISO 7010 signs on one site?

AS 1319 is the Australian Standard; ISO 7010 is the international equivalent. Pictograms are similar but not identical. On an Australian workplace you should use AS 1319 as the primary standard — ISO 7010 signs are widely accepted as equivalent where no AS 1319 equivalent exists (certain chemical pictograms, for example), but mixing both freely creates visual inconsistency. Pick one standard per site.

How long should an AS 1319 sign last?

Depends on the material. Corflute on a construction hoarding should last one project (6–12 months). Polypropylene indoor should last 2+ years. Colorbond fence-mounted should last 7–10 years. Aluminium pole-mounted signs should last 10+ years. When the pictogram is no longer clearly legible from the rated viewing distance, the sign must be replaced — faded is not compliant.

Do I need reflective signs indoors?

No. Reflective sheeting (AS/NZS 1906.1 Class 1 or Class 2) is designed for headlight illumination on roads, or for low-light emergency scenarios where torchlight is the only light source. For a normally-lit indoor workplace, reflective is unnecessary and adds cost for no safety benefit. Use reflective only in loading docks operating after dark, unlit car parks, or roadside signage.

Does Platinum Signs manufacture to AS 1319?

Yes. Every pre-printed safety sign in our catalogue is drawn from master artwork that has been proofed against AS 1319:1994 colour (Appendix A), dimensional (Appendix B) and pictogram geometry specifications. Print is UV-direct on industrial equipment, and materials are specified at full thickness — not reduced to shave cost. Every order ships with a compliance statement on request for audit purposes.

Next steps

The fastest route to AS 1319 compliance is to browse by class — prohibition, mandatory, danger, warning, emergency, fire — and pick from pre-printed stock at the size your viewing distance demands. For multi-sign site packs (construction entry, warehouse, factory) our volume pricing drops to 40 percent off at 100+ units, which is where most new-site orders land. For anything outside pre-printed stock, custom print-on-demand is available on the same materials with 3–5 day lead time.