Hand-crafted carved signs that announce your business with the warmth and weight of real material — built and finished in our Orange Park shop since 1987.
Carved signs predate every other form of business signage by centuries — and there's a reason they've never gone out of style. A well-designed, hand-finished carved sign communicates quality, permanence, and craftsmanship the moment someone sees it. They don't shout. They don't blink. They simply look like they belong.
At Custom Graphics & Sign Designs, carved HDU and cedar signs are some of our favorite work. Each one is CNC-routed in our shop, hand-finished, primed, and painted by our team — then installed by the same crew that built it. The result is a sign that looks like it was made by people who cared, because it was.
Different materials deliver different looks, lifespans, and price points. We help Jacksonville business owners pick the right one for the project.
HDU — High-Density Urethane — is the modern standard for carved exterior signage. It carves crisply on a CNC router, holds fine detail, and accepts paint like a dream. Best of all, it doesn't rot, warp, crack, or swell, which makes it the smart choice for the Florida climate.
We use HDU for storefront panels, monument-mounted signs, neighborhood entry signs, church signs, and any project where the look of carved wood is desired without the maintenance of real wood.
When the brand calls for the warmth, grain, and authenticity of real wood, Western Red Cedar is the answer. Naturally rot-resistant and dimensionally stable, cedar takes paint and stain beautifully — and sandblasting brings out the grain in the recessed background for a classic, organic look.
We use cedar for residential entry signs, neighborhood monuments, mountain or rustic-themed businesses, restaurants, and anywhere natural material is part of the design intent.
For premium projects where the wood itself is meant to be the design feature — restaurants, breweries, hospitality, and luxury retail — we work with white oak, mahogany, and other specialty hardwoods. Often paired with HDU dimensional letters or applied gold leaf for a refined, layered look.
Many of our most successful carved signs are part of a larger monument structure — a stacked-stone base, a brick pier, a cedar post-and-rail frame, or a fabricated aluminum support. We design and engineer the entire assembly so the carved panel is the star and the rest of the sign disappears into the architecture.
For most of sign-making history, carved signs meant cedar, redwood, or mahogany. Beautiful — but in a climate like Northeast Florida's, real wood signs require constant attention. UV breaks down the finish, humidity swells and shrinks the panel, and over time even the best-built wood sign starts to crack, check, or rot at the fasteners.
HDU — High-Density Urethane — was developed specifically to solve those problems. It carves like wood, paints like wood, and looks like wood once it's finished. But it's a closed-cell polymer, which means it doesn't absorb moisture, doesn't expand or contract with humidity, and doesn't host insects, mold, or rot. A finished HDU sign in our Florida climate will routinely look great for 10 to 15 years with normal maintenance — far longer than an equivalent wood sign in the same conditions.
That said, we still build plenty of cedar signs. There are projects where the natural grain, smell, and authenticity of real wood is the entire point — historic district signs, mountain-themed restaurants, custom residential entries, neighborhood gateways. For those projects, we source select-grade Western Red Cedar, finish it with marine-grade sealers, and engineer the mounting to keep moisture away from the end grain. Done right, a cedar sign can last 20+ years and develop a beautiful patina over time.
Our job is to ask the right questions about your project — climate exposure, mounting environment, brand aesthetic, expected lifespan, and budget — and recommend the material that makes the most sense. Sometimes that's HDU, sometimes that's cedar, and sometimes it's a hybrid where the panel is HDU and the framing is real wood.
The carving technique we use shapes the entire personality of the sign. We pick the technique to match the look you're after.
The most common technique — letters and graphics are routed to a single uniform depth. Clean, classic, and the most economical option. Perfect for storefront panels and entry signs where readability is the priority.
Letters are carved with sloped, beveled faces — like a chiseled pyramid — that catch light and shadow throughout the day. The result is a dramatic, dimensional look popular for upscale brands, breweries, and hospitality projects.
The recessed background can be left smooth, given a stippled or rock texture, or sandblasted for an organic, hand-hewn feel. Texture adds depth, hides minor dings over time, and gives the sign a craftsman quality.
Once carved, the sign is hand-finished by our paint team — multiple coats of two-part urethane or 100% acrylic enamel, with the option of 23k gold leaf accents, distressing, or reflective vinyl for nighttime visibility.
Every carved sign that leaves our shop has been through five hands and a dozen steps. It starts at the design table, where our team draws the artwork to scale and proves the layout, sight lines, and proportions. From there, the design is exported as a tool path and cut on our CNC router — typically out of 15-pound or 20-pound HDU board, sometimes out of cedar or oak. Once carved, the panel is sanded, primed, and painted by hand. Detail work — fine lines, distressing, gold leaf, accent vinyl — is done last, by the same person, so the finished piece reads like a single object instead of a pile of steps.
Then we install it. Whether the sign mounts to a building wall, a cedar post-and-rail frame, an aluminum bow-string truss, a stacked-stone monument, or a brick pier, the same crew that built it handles the install. That accountability — design, fabrication, finishing, and installation under one roof — is the difference between a sign that looks great in photos and a sign that still looks great five years from now.
A sample of carved HDU and cedar projects completed across Jacksonville, Orange Park, and Northeast Florida.
HDU stands for High-Density Urethane — a dense, closed-cell foam board engineered specifically for the sign industry. It carves cleanly on a CNC router, accepts paint beautifully, and unlike wood, it will not rot, warp, crack, swell, or attract insects. HDU is the modern standard for carved exterior signs because it delivers the look of carved wood with dramatically longer outdoor life, especially in humid Florida conditions.
A properly built and finished HDU sign — primed, painted with two-part urethane or 100% acrylic enamel, and installed under reasonable conditions — will routinely look great for 10 to 15 years or more in the Florida climate. Periodic repainting can extend that indefinitely. HDU itself does not degrade in sunlight, salt air, or humidity; only the finish is the variable.
Yes — when the look and feel of real wood is part of the brand. Western Red Cedar is naturally rot-resistant, takes paint and stain well, and gives a sign authentic warmth and grain that HDU can only approximate. We use cedar for residential entry signs, mountain or rustic-themed brands, neighborhood entry monuments, and any project where natural material is the design intent. We pair cedar with stainless fasteners and marine-grade finishes for maximum life.
Sandblasting and CNC carving both produce a dimensional sign — letters and graphics raised above a recessed background. Sandblasting uses high-pressure abrasive media, traditionally on cedar or redwood, and produces a textured, organic background. CNC carving uses a precision router, typically on HDU, and produces sharper, more controlled detail. Both are considered "carved signs" in the industry, and both can be specified as smooth or with a textured background depending on the look you want.
Carved sign pricing depends on size, complexity of artwork, number of paint colors, the number of carving levels (single-level vs. multi-prismatic), and any special finishes like gold leaf or distressing. Most small entry signs and storefront panels fall in the $600 to $2,500 range fabricated; monument-mounted carved signs with structural posts or masonry bases run higher. Call (904) 264-7667 for a free quote.
Jacksonville · Orange Park · Fleming Island · Middleburg · Ponte Vedra Beach · St. Augustine · Fernandina Beach · Yulee · Green Cove Springs · Macclenny
Free quote, in-house design, and a finished carved sign that fits the brand — start to finish from one team.
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