How Much Does It Cost to Run a Neon Sign? (Real UK Numbers)

You might have this picture in your mind of a motel sign that's lit up all night, using a lot of electricity. That's understandable, given that old neon signs used a lot of power. But modern LED signs are different. If you're worried about how much an LED sign will add to your electricity bill, the truth is, it's not much. We're talking about tiny amounts of money, just pennies.

Let's do the actual maths rather than waving vaguely at "energy efficient".

The numbers that matter

So, when you get your electricity bill, it's measured in something called kilowatt-hours, or kWh for short. Now, the price of one kWh of electricity is around 26p, but this might be slightly different for you, depending on what it says on your actual bill. For our purposes, though, we'll just use 26p as the price.

A modern LED neon sign draws surprisingly little power:

• A small sign, like one that's about 50cm in size, can have a name, a heart, or just a single word on it, and it usually starts at around 15 watts.
• A medium sign (around 1 metre, a short phrase) typically draws 25–50 watts.
• A large or dense sign (1.5 metres plus, or lots of tubing) can draw anywhere up to 120 watts.

Let's put things into perspective - an old 60W light bulb used to consume 60 watts of power, whereas a modern kettle uses a whopping 3,000 watts. On the other hand, your fridge-freezer runs continuously, using between 100 and 200 watts at all times. This gives you an idea of just how much power different appliances use.

What that means in pounds and pence

Take a typical medium sign at 30 watts, running 5 hours every evening:

30 watts × 5 hours = 150 watt-hours = 0.15 kWh a day. At 26p per kWh, that's about 4p a day, roughly £1.20 a month, or £14 a year.

Using a small bedroom sign that runs on 15 watts for just 3 hours a night is really cost-effective. It works out to be a little over a penny per day, which is almost nothing. To put that into perspective, it's about £4 a year. When you think about it, you'll probably end up spending more money on batteries for your TV remote than you will on powering this sign.

Even the largest signs are pretty affordable. Our biggest and most power-hungry signs use up to 120 watts of power. Let's say you run one of these signs for 12 hours a day, every day, as a shop sign that's on from morning till late. That works out to 1.44 kilowatt-hours of electricity per day, which is about 37p per day, or roughly £135 per year. When you think about it, that's a pretty small price to pay for a sign that's going to be on for over 4,000 hours per year. And it's not just the cost - it's also a really effective way to market your business. I mean, a sign that's visible to potential customers for that many hours is going to be way more effective than a small print ad that might only be seen by a few people. Plus, most business signs don't even use that much power, so the cost is usually a lot lower.

How this compares with old glass neon

Traditional neon signs use a lot of power because they run on high voltage from a transformer. They use more energy than LED signs of the same size. This means you have to replace the transformer every now and then, which costs money. On the other hand, LED signs use a lot less power per metre of tube, which is why most custom sign makers have switched to using them. This is a big reason why LED signs have become so popular - they're just more efficient and cost-effective in the long run.

If you want to know more about how LED signs affect the environment, we've looked at how they're made, shipped, and used, as well as how they use electricity. We've written about the good things LED signs made in the UK can do for the environment and energy use.

"Will it be expensive to leave on all night?"

This is the question behind the question, usually. The answer: a 15-watt sign left on for a full 12-hour night costs about 4.7p. Leave it on every single night of the year and it's around £17.

Leaving LED signs on all the time can actually be a good thing, rather than turning them on and off constantly. The reason for this is that the components in the sign don't have to deal with the stress of being switched on and off multiple times a day, which can help them last longer. It's not like it's going to keep us up at night either way, but if you want to get the best of both worlds, you can just use a plug-in timer, which is pretty cheap and can handle the switching for you automatically. This way, you can have the sign turn on and off at set times, without having to worry about it. Plus, it's just a few pounds, so it's not a big deal.

What changes the running cost

Brightness. Running a sign at 50% brightness via a dimmer roughly halves its consumption. Since most signs look better dimmed slightly in an evening room anyway, a dimmer saves money while improving the look. Rare win-win.

Colour. Different colours draw slightly different amounts of power (white tube typically draws a touch more than a single colour), but the differences are small. Choose the colour you love.

Size and design density. More metres of tube means more LEDs means more watts. A sprawling cursive phrase uses more power than a compact word, but even "more" here means the difference between £4 and £8 a year.

A quick DIY calculation for any sign

If you want to check a specific sign, the formula is simple:

Watts ÷ 1,000 × hours per day × your pence-per-kWh = daily cost in pence.

To figure out how much a sign costs to run, you need to check the power adapter for the wattage. Let's say you have a sign that uses a 30W adapter, and it's on for 6 hours a day. The cost would be 30 watts divided by 1,000, then multiplied by 6 hours, and finally multiplied by 26p. This works out to 4.7p per day. One thing to keep in mind is that the adapter rating is the maximum power it can supply, but the sign itself usually uses less than that. So, this method might give you a slightly higher number than it actually is. But if the cost is still just pennies, then you don't have to worry about it too much.

The bottom line

Running a home neon sign is really cheap, it's only a few pounds to about £15 a year. And even the biggest business signs that are on all the time only cost around £135 a year. For homes, that's basically nothing. For businesses, it's one of the most affordable marketing tools you can have. A sign in your window works every evening, all year round, and it costs less than what most businesses spend on marketing in just one week. It's a great way to get your message out there without breaking the bank. Plus, it's always on, so you can reach customers every day of the year. Whether you're a small business or a big one, a neon sign is a great investment. You can check out some options for business signs and see how they can work for you.

The purchase price and the design are the decisions worth agonising over. The electricity genuinely isn't.