This summer my wife and I spent a fair amount of time and energy on increasing the “curb appeal” of our home and the last official exterior home improvement we’re performed this year was purchasing one of those fancy new metal house number plaques!

Our old house numbers sign before we painted our house.

Our previous house numbers were more than likely original to our house: they were black metal letters that were screwed directly onto our wood shingles. They spelled out our house number in script letters and were nearly impossible to see, much less read, from the street. They were also placed on the opposite side of the door from our front porch light, so they were virtually invisible at night.

Big hardware stores like Lowe’s and The Home Depot sell a large variety of metal custom-ordered house number signs under different brand names but they’re almost all actually made by a sign and mailbox company called Whitehall Products. The plaques are almost always mounted tightly to the wall so you’re really unable to get a good idea of the quality of them. I decided to write up a little review, just to let people know that those house number signs really do seem to be pretty well-made and durable.

My wife and I thought a nice looking metal etched plaque would look good on our newly painted home, so we went shopping. Our local stores had limited selections and photographs, but we were able to see just about everything available at the address and house numbers plaque section of Yardiac.com

We got our metal house numbers plaque from Yardiac.com for a pretty reasonable price.

There are tons of designs and color options, but we ultimately settled on the style that you see in almost every store: the Williamsburg Standard with the bronze coloring and gold letter option. In the photo above you can see the what the color combination looks like. That’s not our house sign, but I can tell you that the photo is remarkably true to color. The entire sign was bronze in color, while the gold numbering was painted on. It looks pretty solid, so we’re hoping the paint on the numbers holds up to the elements. They’re raised enough that a light roller of paint could probably freshen them up pretty easily if it’s ever needed.

We placed our order online because the prices are usually better than the large hardware stores. We might also buy a solar house sign light from the same place we bought our sign, but we’re holding off for now. Our house sign plate included the number of our house as well as the letters of our street name so we expected it would take the full “4 to 6 weeks” to arrive, but the entire turn around time from ordering to delivery was a little under 3 weeks in our case! It just showed up in a box at our doorstep one evening, and we couldn’t wait to open it up and see it.

The first thing I noticed almost immediately when I opened the box was how light it is. Our house numbers sign measures about 14 inches wide by 11 inches high (one of the larger house number plates available) and it’s actually under 2 pounds! Yes, it’s metal, but it’s apparently tinted aluminum so it’s not nearly as heavy as it “looks.” That’s actually a good thing because hanging a 2 pound sign on your home’s exterior is a heck of a lot easier than trying to hang a 15 pound sign.

You can see the metal house number signs are really metal plates held to a frame with four screws with rubber washers in the back.

These signs look like they’re one solid piece of metal in the store, but they’re really made of two different pieces, at least in this case. There is a metal frame and then there is a metal “customized” plate that simply fits into the frame and is screwed on from behind the plaque. To mount the plaque I received two small brass screws. There were only 2 inches long, and while they may have worked with my wood shingles, I chose to use some longer brass screws I had sitting around.

Installation was a piece of cake, really. I just brought out the level, marked the screw holes on the wall and drilled some starter holes in my wood shingles. I always, always drill starter holes for anything I’m working on now because it helps avoid splitting the wood. Then I put the sign up, twisted in the screws and stood back and smiled!

Yes, customized metal house number plaques are more expensive than just putting up some house number stickers, but they’re designed to last for years and they really add a professional and classy feel to a home’s exterior. Adding a new house number plate to your home is a great quick do-it-yourself project to make your home’s entry way look more appealing.