DO-254 discusses the need for "Design Standards" and Order 8110-105 takes this a step further, discussing the specific need for HDL coding standards. Because of this, many companies having to comply with DO-254 are either looking for examples of good standards to use, or recognize that they have insufficient or inconsistent standards and want to improve their approach. A recent initiative launched with the DO-254 Users Group gathered information from 20+ companies on the HDL coding standards that were deemed most applicable for DO-254 design programs. This white paper provides this list of generally accepted HDL design best practice coding guidelines that should be considered for any fail-safe design, including DO-254 programs. It also describes how to automate the checking of these HDL coding standards using the DesignChecker in HDL Designer.