Techniques for transmitting signaling with localized spreading are described. In one design, a transmitter (e.g., a base station) spreads multiple signaling symbols to obtain multiple sets of output symbols and further maps the multiple sets of output symbols to multiple time frequency blocks. The spreading may be localized to each time frequency block. Prior to the spreading, the transmitter may scale the multiple signaling symbols with multiple gains determined based on the transmit power for these signaling symbols. The transmitter may scramble the scaled signaling symbols to obtain scrambled symbols and may spread the scrambled symbols to obtain the multiple sets of output symbols. The transmitter may map each set of output symbols to a respective time frequency block.