The Ultimate Guide to Short Number Plates: What You Need to Know
Short number plates are a hot trend among car enthusiasts, offering a unique way to personalize your vehicle. But what exactly are short number plates, and how do they differ from traditional license plates? In this ultimate guide, we'll explore everything you need to know about short number plates, including their history, popularity, and legal requirements.
What are short number plates?
Short number plates are a type of personalized license plate where the plate itself is shorter than the standard number plate size of 520mm x 111mm. They are often sought after by car enthusiasts so that they number plates are more discreet and take up less space on the their vehicles.
Short numbers plates can be particularly effective when combined with a dateless registration, which have fewer letters and numbers, as the number plates for these can be made very short. For example. a four character dateless registration could be displayed on a number plate as small as 287mm x 111mm; just over 23cm shorter than a standard plate!
The legal requirements for short number plates.
Short number plates are subject to the same legal requirements as standard number plates. They must be made from reflective material and display black characters on a white background on the front plate, and black characters on a yellow background on the rear plate. The characters must be a certain size and font, and there must be a certain amount of space between them. As long as those details are abided by, then the width of the plate can be shorter than the standard 520mm x 111mm number plate size.
How to buy short number plates.
There are a number of online retailers which specialise in manufacturing custom number plates, including short number plates. For example, Just Number Plates or Number 1 Plates, and both are able to combine short number plates with 4d styling or 3d styling, if that's your thing (see our previous articles: 3D number plates and 4D number plates).
You will need to prove your entitlement to the vehicle registration that you want to be displayed on your short number plate, for example, by providing your V5 Vehicle Registration Certificate or your V778 Retention Certificate.