Shop Name Boards in Delhi Street by Street: Chandni Chowk, Karol Bagh and Lajpat Nagar at Rs.80 to Rs.1,150 per sq ft, Five Authorities (2026)

"A board that is legal in Karol Bagh may violate regulations in Connaught Place just 3 km away." That sentence sits near the top of our Delhi shop name board page, and it is the reason a Delhi street guide cannot be a price list. The card is one card: ACP Rs.650 to Rs.900 per sq ft, ACP with 3D letters Rs.800 to Rs.1,150, GSB glow sign Rs.250 to Rs.420, non-lit Rs.80 to Rs.140, the same in Noida, Gurugram and Faridabad, with design, fabrication, transport, installation and the permit filing inside it. What changes from street to street is everything around the card: which of the five authorities signs the permit, the largest board that authority allows, the annual fee it charges, the frontage the street actually offers, and whether the shop trades after dark. Chandni Chowk gives you 6 to 10 ft of heritage frontage under MCD North. Karol Bagh gives you 10 to 15 ft under the same authority and a 4 by 4 ft cap on illuminated boards. Lajpat Nagar gives you 12 to 18 ft under MCD South and a 6 by 4 ft ceiling. This guide works each of those against the card, as the page publishes it on 12 October 2026, in the street-by-street method of our Hyderabad and Pune guides.

What does the Delhi shop name board card publish, and which authority sits beside it?

Our shop name board page for Delhi prices four board lines per square foot and states that design, fabrication, transport, installation and permit handling for the governing authority are inside the rate, at the same rates across Noida, Gurugram and Faridabad, with a 2-year structural warranty on ACP and GSB and multi-outlet discounts from 3 locations without a figure. Delivery is 5 to 7 working days from design approval for ACP and GSB and 3 to 5 for non-lit. The page does not mention GST; our other city guides treat it as 18 percent extra, and this one does the same where a landed figure is given.

The second half of the price is not on the card. It is the authority, and the page names five with their zones and the rules each applies, which is the only place on the site those rules are published, so the table below repeats them as stated and adds nothing. Where the page gives a fee it is quoted; where it says only "lower fees" or "annual maintenance fee", that is what appears.

Which board does each Delhi street need?

The page describes its streets in two places, a corridor list with frontages and a timing section on how each market reads a board. The table merges them with the card. The frontage column is the page's; the board and the price are our pairing of its advice with its rates, using the authority's size cap as the ceiling. Our Pune street guide and Hyderabad street guide use the same method; Delhi is the first city where the ceiling changes with the street.

What fits a 6 to 10 ft Chandni Chowk frontage?

Chandni Chowk is the one street on the page where the frontage, not the authority, sets the ceiling. The page gives 6 to 10 ft of ultra-narrow heritage frontage, mounting constraints on old structures and vertical-format boards as the common answer, and it lists the market under MCD North, whose 4 by 4 ft cap on illuminated boards is wider than many of the shops. A 6 ft shop with a 2 ft fascia band is 12 sq ft, the same area as the page's typical 4 by 3 ft board, so the 4 by 3 ft prices on the card apply almost unchanged: Rs.960 to Rs.1,680 non-lit, Rs.3,000 to Rs.5,040 as a glow sign, Rs.7,800 to Rs.10,800 in ACP. Turned vertical, a 3 by 4 ft panel is the same 12 sq ft and the same money, which is why the page's vertical-format note costs nothing extra on the card.

The page is specific about when this market trades. It names Chandni Chowk first among the evening markets, says half of Delhi retail happens after 5 PM, and calls a glow sign essential rather than optional there, with the auto-dusk sensor set for sunsets that move from 5:15 PM in December to 7:15 PM in June. It also names the wedding-season peak and, in its timing section, says summer installs in Chandni Chowk happen early morning because a metal shutter frame in June is too hot to touch by 11 AM. None of that changes the price; it changes the week the board goes up. For the lane-level format that works the same alleys, the page pairs the board with auto branding in Delhi for metro-exit colony reach.

Why does Karol Bagh's Ajmal Khan Road reward depth and light over width?

Karol Bagh is the page's largest market district, 5,000 plus shops in a dense grid on 10 to 15 ft frontages, and MCD North's rule, as the page gives it, caps illuminated boards in market areas at 4 by 4 ft with 1 ft of projection. That cap is the whole argument for the street. A 15 ft shop cannot run a lit board across its full frontage, so the page's advice on Ajmal Khan Road, that boards compete shutter to shutter and 3D depth and evening illumination matter more than raw size, is also the arithmetic: the money goes into the 16 sq ft the rule allows. At the card that is Rs.4,000 to Rs.6,720 as a GSB and Rs.12,800 to Rs.18,400 as ACP with 3D letters, and the page's own Karol Bagh job, a 4 by 3 ft ACP board with 3D acrylic letters and a GSB backlight at Rs.14,200, installed in 6 days with the permit processed in 3, is the combined version of that board.

Divide that job back and it is Rs.1,183 per sq ft, Rs.33 above the top of the 3D band, with the backlight accounting for the difference on our reading; the page does not price the combination separately. The MCD North fee the page gives, Rs.500 to Rs.2,000 a year depending on size, runs beside the board for as long as it stays up, and the page's wedding-season note applies here too: jewellers on the Karol Bagh gold strip refresh signage in August and September, and a board left until October queues behind them.

What does Lajpat Nagar's 6 by 4 ft ceiling buy?

Lajpat Nagar is the widest of the three streets on the page, 12 to 18 ft frontages and 2,000 plus shops, and it falls under MCD South, where the page says larger boards up to 6 by 4 ft are permitted with strict projection limits and no neon in some upscale zones. The ceiling is 24 sq ft, twice the typical board, and the page says ACP, 3D and backlit boards dominate the strip. At the card a 6 by 4 ft board is Rs.15,600 to Rs.21,600 in ACP, Rs.19,200 to Rs.27,600 with 3D letters and Rs.6,000 to Rs.10,080 as a glow sign; a combined ACP, 3D and backlight board at the page's Karol Bagh rate of Rs.1,183 per sq ft would be about Rs.28,400, our extrapolation from that single published job.

Two things on the page sit beside that number. The MCD South fee is Rs.1,000 to Rs.5,000 a year, the highest band the page publishes, and the apparel shops around Central Market are named among the businesses that refresh signage in August and September ahead of the wedding season. The page also says Lajpat Nagar and Sarojini Nagar are strips where a crane or ladder blocks the lane, so installation is scheduled around market off-days and association norms. The ten-city cost per year of life guide puts Delhi ACP at up to Rs.155 per sq ft per year and GSB at Rs.84, so the 24 sq ft ceiling costs roughly Rs.2,000 to Rs.3,700 a year as a glow sign or ACP respectively over the published life, before the authority fee.

How do Connaught Place and Khan Market flip the logic?

NDMC is the authority the page spends the most words on and prices the least. It gives no fee, caps sizes below MCD standards, enforces a colour palette, limits illumination types and requires heritage fonts, and it says restraint wins on these streets as much because the clientele expects it as because the rules demand it. The page's Connaught Place job is the whole picture in one line: a 3 by 2.5 ft heritage ACP board with stainless steel 3D letters, 7.5 sq ft, Rs.18,500, 18 days including approval, passed on first inspection. That is Rs.2,467 per sq ft on our arithmetic, more than double the top of the 3D band, on a card that prices acrylic 3D letters and does not price steel ones for Delhi at all. The lesson for a CP or Khan Market tenant is that the card is a floor here, not a quote, and that the 2 to 3 weeks the page gives for NDMC approval is the real lead time.

What do the authority fees add over the life of a Delhi board?

The page publishes annual fees for two of the five authorities, and because ACP has a published life of 5 or more years, those fees compound into a second price that the card never shows. The table runs the page's fee bands over 5 years beside the board they attach to.

At the top of the MCD South band, the fee over five years exceeds the price of the board it licenses, which is the strongest case on the page for sizing a Lajpat Nagar board to what the strip needs rather than to the 6 by 4 ft ceiling. At the bottom of the MCD North band the fee is a sixth of a Karol Bagh board. Since the page says the fee depends on size, the cheapest way to cut the recurring line is the same as the cheapest way to clear the cap: a smaller, lit, 3D board rather than a larger, flat one.

Which published Delhi figures do not reconcile?

The Delhi page is the most detailed city page on the site about rules and the least consistent about time, and two of our older posts carry rates that predate the card. None of this changes what to plan on, which is the card and the authority table above; it changes which figure to ask about before signing.

Our earlier Delhi NCR cost guide remains the better explanation of why the MCD and the NDMC split the city; this guide supersedes its rates. For how a single frontage is priced across widths on a comparable card, the Bangalore cost by frontage guide does for Bangalore what the street table above does for Delhi, and the national shop name board page carries the material arguments common to all ten cities.

When should a Delhi market board go up?

The page's timing section is unusually direct, and it is calendar advice rather than price advice: nothing in it changes the card, all of it changes the schedule. The table puts its windows in order.