Are Hex Number Plates Legal? What the UK Rules Say

Are hex number plates legal? The short answer: yes. Hex number plates are road legal in the UK as long as everything else about the plate follows the normal rules. The law sets the size of the characters, the spacing and the margins, not the shape of the plate, so cutting the corners into a hexagon is fine provided the registration keeps its full-size characters and the margin around them.

Written by the PlateBoss team, led by owner HD. We’ve been making plates since 2019 and are a DVLA-registered number plate supplier with a workshop in Hounslow, west London. Checked against DVLA leaflet INF104, GOV.UK guidance on number plates and the Display of Registration Marks Regulations 2001, October 2026. How we write our guides.

In this guide

• What we tell customers
• What the law actually says about plate shape
• The conditions a hex plate still has to meet
• Who buys hex plates
• FAQs

What we tell customers

We get asked whether hex plates are legal all the time, usually by someone who’s seen them on another car and assumed they must be a show plate. Our answer is always the same: hex plates are completely road legal, as long as all the other conditions are met.

The hexagon shape is just the outline of the plate. What gets people fined or failed at an MOT is never the shape. It’s the things that sometimes come with cheap hex plates: squashed or stretched characters, gaps closed up to spell a word, or a font that isn’t the standard one.

What the law actually says about plate shape

The rules for UK number plates come from the Road Vehicles (Display of Registration Marks) Regulations 2001 and the DVLA’s guidance leaflet INF104. Both are very specific about the registration itself: on a car, every character is 79mm tall and 50mm wide, with an 11mm gap between characters and 33mm between the two groups.

What they don’t do is set the shape of the plate. INF104 gives character sizes and margins, and the regulations say the corners of a plate may be rounded off as long as the margins aren’t infringed. There’s no rule saying a plate has to be a plain rectangle, which is why hex plates (sometimes called Lambo-style plates) can be legal.

To be clear about where the line sits: nobody publishes an official “approved shapes” list. A hex plate is legal because it meets every written rule, not because the DVLA has signed off the shape itself. That’s why the details below matter.

The conditions a hex plate still has to meet

A hex plate has to pass every test a standard plate does. On a car registered from September 2001, that means:

• Full-size characters: 79mm tall, 50mm wide (except 1 and I), with a 14mm stroke. Characters can’t be shrunk to fit the shape.
• Correct spacing: 11mm between characters and 33mm between the two groups. No closing gaps or moving letters.
• Margins of at least 11mm at the top, bottom and sides. On a hex plate the cut corners must not eat into this margin.
• The standard font, in a single shade of solid black (for plates fitted from 1 September 2021).
• Reflective material: white at the front, yellow at the back, with no background pattern.
• Markings: the supplier’s name and postcode and the British Standard number, BS AU 145e.

Get any of those wrong and the plate is illegal whatever its shape. You could be fined up to £1,000, your car could fail its MOT, and in some cases the DVLA can withdraw the registration.

Does a long registration fit? Yes. We make hex plates for every registration length up to the maximum of seven characters, so you don’t have to give up legal spacing to get the look. If you’re not sure how wide your plate needs to be, our guide to number plate sizes in the UK has the minimum widths.

Who buys hex plates

At the counter, hex plates mostly go on sportier cars, and we sell a lot of them to younger drivers who want something that stands out without risking a fine. They come in standard printed, 3D gel and 4D styles, so you can combine the shape with a raised finish.

If you’re also thinking about raised characters, our guides to whether 4D plates are legal and whether gel plates are legal cover the extra rules for those finishes. For the full picture, see road-legal number plate rules.

Road-legal hex and premium plates

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Hex Number Plates

Rated 5.00 out of 5

£49.99

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4D 3mm Number Plates

Rated 5.00 out of 5

£44.99

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4D 3mm Gel Number Plates

Rated 5.00 out of 5

£59.99

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Bevelled Number Plates

Rated 5.00 out of 5

£69.99

Are hex number plates legal? FAQs

Sources

• DVLA leaflet INF104: Vehicle registration numbers and number plates
• GOV.UK: Rules for number plates
• GOV.UK: Displaying number plates (fines and MOT)
• The Road Vehicles (Display of Registration Marks) Regulations 2001