Luxembourg is recognizable thanks to the country using yellow, rear and front license plates. The plates also feature the standard blue, vertical, European stripe on the left. The only other countries to use similar looking plates to Luxembourg are the Netherlands (which is virtually an entirely flat country, contrasting Luxembourg) and Israel which looks vastly different. The U.K. also has similar looking yellow plates but these are only positioned on the rear of U.K. vehicles with the front U.K. plates being white coloured. The Luxembourg landscape is almost always undulating and consists of typically a gentle slope. There are many green grass fields around Luxembourg. The Luxembourg bollards are rather generic looking so may not be too useful however they are white and have a diagonal black stripe. On the front of the bollards (in the black section) is a vertical, white rectangle and on the back of the bollards (also in the black section) are two white circles. Luxembourg has three languages- Luxembourgish, German and French. Luxembourg stands out for its yellow front and rear license plates. They also feature the standard European vertical blue stripe on the left. Luxembourg plates look the same as the Netherlands and Israel.

Luxembourg uses long yellow plates with a blue strip on the left.

Since Luxembourg is a small country, foreign cars with white plates are somewhat common.

Some pre-2009 French cars have yellow rear plates.

Bollards are black and white. They are wedge-shaped and have grey reflectors. Some have a distinctive indent in the lower half.

They look more or less identical to German bollards.

The bollards of Belgium, the Netherlands and France look very different.

Chevrons are black with yellow arrows. You may also rarely come across blue and yellow chevrons.

None of Luxembourg’s neighbours use these chevrons. 

The only other European countries with black and yellow chevrons tend to have wildly different landscapes: Iceland, Norway, Finland, Ireland, and Portugal.

Poles with poletops shaped like upside-down tridents are the most common type of pole in Luxembourg.


Luxembourg is a highly multilingual country. It has three administrative languages: Luxembourgish, French, and German.

French is the language that is mostly used for public communication. Road signs and advertisements are usually in French.

Presence of German on signs is less common compared to French, but certainly not non-existent.

Luxembourgish is closely related to German and can look very similar. Like German, it uses umlauts (dots over vowels). In addition, it uses a fair amount of double vowels, and sometimes an é with an accent.

Most town names have their origin in Luxembourgish, German, or both.

Directional signs are yellow with a thin black outline. Town names are written in uppercase. The signs have a pointed tip. They are completely surrounded by a frame, making them very recognizable.

Some directional signs feature road numbers: 

Regional road numbers have 1 or 2 digits and a red box.

Local road numbers have 3 digits and a yellow box.

Town entrance signs are also yellow and surrounded by a frame.

Most of these signs have bilingual versions of the town name. They frequently have the road number on the top, along with a speed limit sign.

The frames mentioned in the previous two tips are also commonly found on a lot of other road infrastructure.

Denmark notably also uses a lot of similar-looking frames on road infrastructure. A recognizable difference is that the corners on Luxembourg frames are more square, while Danish frames are more rounded.

Street signs are almost always short and usually have a white background. The exact designs vary from town to town. 

A very common design is the one pictured on the left in the example image, with slanted blue corners.

Belgian street signs often appear short as well, but can have other background colours – not just white.

In addition, Dutch street signs almost always have a blue background and tend to be much longer than they are tall.

Some signposts have this bulky, round reflector with blue and white markings.

Similar markings are found in Sweden and Finland. Landscape should be sufficient to tell these apart from Luxembourg, however.

Pedestrian signs in Luxembourg have 5 vertical stripes.

Belgian pedestrian signs have 2 horizontal stripes.

Bus stop signs are blue and the bus always has six windows.

Bus stop signs in Belgium and the Netherlands have significantly different designs. For example, the Belgian bus stop sign always has a yellow signpost.

Almost all of Luxembourg’s landscape consists of green rolling hills, with a patchwork of agriculture and forests.

If you see a yellow licence plate, and you are not sure what country it belongs to, landscape is often a good clue: almost all of the Netherlands is completely flat.

Houses tend to have dark slate roofs. 

Walls and windows tend to be plain and undecorated. Walls are usually painted white, grey, or pastel colours.

Such architecture can also be found in the surrounding regions in Belgium and France, but is especially prominent in Luxembourg.

Luxembourg uses a fairly generic black and white bollard with a white rectangle inside of the black one, the backside containing 2 white dots.

Road Lines:

Luxembourg uses all white lines.

Road Signs:

Luxembourg tends to use yellow and white signage, often with a frame surrounding the sign.

They use white poles for their speed signs etc.

Electricity poles:

Luxembourg uses metal poles with the wires ‘hanging’ from them, they also have wooden ones.

License plates:

Luxembourg uses the standard EU style plate but yellow in colour.


Often you will find roads lined with trees within Luxembourg.
