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Street and structure paintings are large, decorative paintings installed directly on the street or City structures to beautify neighborhoods and build community.
What is a Street or Structure Painting?
Street paintings are large, decorative paintings installed directly on the street. They may be as large as an intersection or an entire block. Past themes have included animals, flowers, geometric designs, trees, and more. The first modern street painting here in Portland was in 1996. Permits are free!
Structure paintings are decorative paintings installed onto things like pedestrian bridges, retaining walls, and other City owned structures in the public right-of-way.
In addition to the aesthetic beauty of the paintings themselves, they build community and relationships between neighbors, they create a sense of place and apply key crime prevention principles. Any resident, business, or nonprofit may apply to install one.
Permitting Process
A street painting requires two permits; one for the painting itself and one for the street closure to safely install the painting. In order to receive your two permits, you will fill out one application with details about your painting design and street closure. You will complete either a Block Party or Community Event application.
After application submittal, you will receive two confirmation emails. Then, City staff from the street painting program will help coordinate the details around your painting design. City staff from the Block Party or Community Event program will coordinate the details of your street closure.
Please apply for a Block Party permit if:
- Your street painting will require only a neighborhood scale gathering.
- Your day-of contact is a resident on the street that will be painted.
Apply for a Painting and Block Party permit
Please apply for a Community Event permit if:
- You expect attendance to reach over 100 people at one time during your event.
- You are a business.
- Your street painting is a part of a larger event, like a street fair or market.
- Installation requires a longer closure.
Apply for a Painting and Community Event permit
A vast majority of street paintings need a Block Party permit. If you don't know which permit to apply for, please reach out to streetpaintings@portlandoregon.gov and we'll be happy to help.
What should you know before applying?
The biggest misperception about street paintings is that they affect traffic, either making it better or worse. We have no data to support any changes to traffic volume or safety as a result of street paintings. Please take this to heart as you plan your project. We want community members to have reasonable expectations and realistic measures of success.
These are community projects, but the Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) is here to help. The community designs the painting, purchases the paint, and installs it themselves. In addition, the community decides if they would like to maintain the painting in future years while continuing to be responsible for all aspects of painting installation. PBOT offers lessons learned information from previous projects, design guidance, engineering review, and design approval.
Application Materials
- Design. A drawing of the design overlaid on the street where it is to be painted. The design must include the actual colors to be used. We will need to see how the design will be laid out on the street or structure. Seeing the design alone will not provide us enough information to know where you plan to install it.
- Map of the location. To depict the location, it will be important to show the entire roadway or structure area that you would like to paint. This can be submitted as a simple drawing or as a map that is labeled with the information below:
- Depiction of proposed design including colors to be used
- Street names
- North arrow
- Size of painting as explained in the dimensions section
- For midblock paintings, address labels for all properties that are directly next to the proposed painting. This helps us understand the exact location you are proposing.
- For structure paintings, please include photos that clearly demonstrate which structure you'd like to paint where specifically the design will be placed.
- Dimensions. Include length and width, but also distance from the curbs, and how far your design extends beyond an intersection (for intersection paintings) or how far from the intersections your design is (for midblock paintings).
- Street Closure Details. You will be asked to provide information the street you will be closing for your street painting installation. Please be prepared with street names, dates, times, and a day of contact.
- Notification. Your Block Party or Community Event require neighborhood notification. On your outreach material for those permits, indicate that your project includes a street painting and attach the approved design. This will satisfy the street painting notification requirement. Any notification prior to design approval is not acceptable as PBOT wants the community to know the specific design that will be installed.
Location criteria
The city has established rules for where street paintings can be. Typically, they are only allowed on low-traffic residential streets, based on standards from city traffic engineers, as follows:
- The road must be classified as a "local service traffic street," an industry term for what most would call a residential street. Find your street classification using our online street classification map. Simply type in an address and click the box on the left that says "Street Classification". If the street is shaded gray, you're okay.
- The road must not be on a transit route or streets classified as a "major emergency response route."
- Low-traffic street, in this context, means there are less than 3,000 vehicles passing through daily (for paintings of an intersection) or less than 2,500 vehicles daily (for mid-block paintings). Check your traffic volume using our online traffic count map.
Structure paintings are subject to more rigorous review by City staff to ensure they do not distract motorists or compromise the ability to maintain City assets. Please allow up to 30 days for review of structure painting applications.
Design criteria
Street and structure paintings become a part of your neighborhood—its identity and aesthetic. They should help build stronger community, so it's important to talk with your neighbors and collaborate with them on creating the design. We've included a flyer you can leave for your neighbors to let them know what you're planning.
Creating this sense of shared ownership and stewardship of the painting leads to a successful project. Often neighbors collaborate to repaint yearly.
There are some restrictions to consider about street and structure painting design first, including:
- No speech. Designs may not contain words, letters, numbers, universally recognized symbols, or logos of any kind.
- No copyrighted material may be used in whole or in part.
- No mimicking of traffic control devices that might affect driver behavior. Put simply, designs should not look like crosswalks, stop signs, or other three-dimensional objects.
- No depiction of activities or products that are not available to all ages.
- No painted games or sports courts such as basketball or pickleball.
- Buffers must be maintained around the following traffic control devices:
- 5-foot buffer around sharrows and lane striping.
- 10-foot buffer on either side of a marked crosswalk.
- 50-foot buffer on approaches to traffic signals
- Also, paintings on side streets adjacent to large streets may not encroach on any legal crossing of the roadway. By state law, every corner is a crosswalk, whether marked or unmarked.
- In some cases, paintings may cover double-yellow stripes in the center of the roadway, but only with approval by PBOT traffic engineers.
Tips on Design
- Contrast. Draw your design on a piece of paper (or on a computer) where the background color is the same grey tone of your roadway. This will help pick colors that get the type of contrast you want. Colors must be included to receive your permit.
- Shapes. Use large, simple shapes, as opposed to many small ones with tricky detail. You want to make sure that youth, the elderly, and people with all kinds of skill levels can participate in the project. Also, large shapes make installation and maintenance much easier.
Painting Supplies
Painting roadways and other public right-of-way requires specific paints with a special additive for slip resistance. This ensures they meet State slip resistance requirements, found on page 937 of the Oregon Standard Specifications for Construction 2021.
Structure paintings require the slip resistance additive if people will be walking on the project. For example, pedestrian bridge paintings will need the non-slip additive but paintings on a retaining wall will not. PBOT will help you determine which paint is appropriate.
Details
Only approved paint can be used for your project. We test paints to ensure that they are safe and not slippery. Most paints are not safe for installations on a roadway. In addition to the list of approved paints below, you do have the option of using paint known as "traffic paint" or "traffic zone marking paint". The benefit of the paints below is that they are able to be tinted to any color you would like. The benefit of the traffic paints is that they tend to be less expensive, but a much smaller range of colors. If you would like to use traffic paint, we would need you to ask the paint store for the "spec sheet" for the product. We would like to review that spec sheet before approving the use of that paint on the street. So, please share the information with us and then wait to purchase your paint until we have given you approval to use that product. Paints must not be altered by adding water or any other substance or objects that would change the overall formulation of the paint.
The approved paints that can be tinted are:
- Rodda SharkSkin Paint
- California Paints AllFlor Porch and Patio Acrylic Epoxy Fortified Paint
- Olympic Solid Stain and Sealant
- Storm System Acrylic Stain
- Benjamin Moore Arborcoat Waterborne Exterior Stain
- Sherwin Williams SuperDeck Exterior Stain
Every drop of paint that hits the ground must have a non-slip additive mixed in. Paint stores sell packets of the additive that are measured to be used in one gallon of paint. So, you just empty the packet into the paint and stir it in. It does settle, so you will want to stir the paint every once in a while. Definitely stir it well if the paint has been sitting with the additive in it for more than 2 hours.
Ongoing upkeep and maintenance
There is no minimum maintenance requirement for street or structure paintings. Typically, neighborhoods choose to maintain their street art or not, either freshening it up every 1-3 years, or letting it slowly fade away.
If the design is not changing, you won't need a new Street Painting permit. However, you must apply to close the street down while you paint. This will require a Block Party permit or a Community Events permit. Please see those web pages for details about which type of permit you will need to close the street.
If the design is changing, even just the colors, please reach out to the street painting program to review the update.
Discounts and other resources
Learn more about the street painting process with City Repair, a non-profit organization dedicated to community-driven transformation of public and community spaces. City Repair provides workshops on street painting management, logistics support, street painting tools library, and discounts on Rodda-Miller paint. Reach out to info@cityrepair.org with "Street Painting" in your subject line for more info.
Contact us
Questions before applying or about your permit?
Contact us at streetpaintings@portlandoregon.gov or 503-823-8893.
Go to application
Applying online is easy and takes about 5 minutes. You do not need to have a complete design when you apply. PBOT staff can help walk you through the process after you've submitted an application.