It is quite usual to find in a landlord’s draft form of lease a tenant’s covenant – meaning an obligation you have to observe or perform – prohibiting you from having any signs, placards, notices, or advertisements etc visible in your windows.
If you are taking the third floor office, I don’t suppose this would worry you very much. If you are taking a ground floor shop or office, it might be a very considerable problem for you.
This sort of obligation shouldn’t appear in a shop lease, but it can slip in – especially if the landlord’s solicitors based the draft lease on a precedent designed for offices. So, whether you are a shop owner or an office user, you should check to make sure that the lease does not contain restrictions of this sort that would make it difficult for you to maximise the benefit of your premises by connecting visually with the public.
Usually, this kind of restriction comes with a scheme where the landlords intend that all the units in a building or parade should have a standardised form of signage. This might just mean a standardised layout for the names of the occupying tenants in the building, to appear on a nice, neat noticeboard in the reception area. Or it may mean that they want every shop to use the same sign layout on the outside of the premises – same background colour, same typeface, etc.
You will probably find, in a situation like this, that there is a further tenant covenant in the lease (usually in the section relating to alterations) which limits your ability to put up whatever signs you want. It will oblige you to apply to the landlord for consent first. If you are not willing to go along with the standardised signage, you will want this to contain an addition: that the landlord’s consent cannot be unreasonably withheld. That will probably mean that the landlord can oppose big flashing neon signs, but it might allow you to break free from an absolute requirement for conformity.