Two materials cover almost every yard sign ordered. Picking between them is genuinely simple once you know how many times the sign will be planted.

Corrugated plastic (coroplast)

A four-millimetre fluted plastic sheet, printed direct with UV inks. It is light, cheap at volume, weatherproof, and stiff enough to stand in wind when the flutes run vertically and an H-stake is in them.

It handles a full outdoor season comfortably and usually much longer. What eventually retires a coroplast sign is fading, or a corner that got run over — not the weather.

Aluminium composite (dibond-style)

Three millimetres of rigid panel: two thin aluminium skins over a polyethylene core. It is heavier, considerably more expensive, and effectively permanent. It does not flex, does not fade quickly, and survives being pulled and replanted repeatedly.

This is the material for a sign that lives in the back of a car and goes into twenty different lawns a year.

The four questions

How many times will it be planted? Once or twice: coroplast. Twenty times: aluminium. How long must it stay out? A season: coroplast. Years: aluminium. How many are you buying? Hundreds: coroplast, always. Does it hang in a frame? Then aluminium, because coroplast flexes in a hanging frame.

The honest default

Coroplast, for about nine orders in ten. Campaigns, contractors, events, markets, schools and open houses are all coroplast jobs. Agents with a permanent branded sign that moves between listings are the main exception, and they usually know it already.