Richardson, TX Building Setbacks & Zoning: Structure Height Limits (2026)

Article VI, Section 3 of Richardson's Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance sets the height standard for the R-1250-M Residential District, one of the city's several single-family zones. A principal building cannot exceed two stories, and the ordinance breaks the height budget down floor by floor: the first story is limited to 25 feet and the second story to 15 feet. Accessory buildings, such as a detached garage, carport or servants' quarters, are held to one story only, with a 12-foot cap for structures of 150 square feet or less and a 25-foot cap for anything larger.

The same two-stories/25-feet/15-feet formula for principal buildings, and the same one-story accessory limit, is repeated word for word in the height regulations sections of every other standard single-family district in the city, including R-1500-M, R-2000-M, R-1800-M, R-1100-M, R-1000-M and R-950-M, each carrying its own Section 3 in its own article of the zoning ordinance. Height itself is defined elsewhere in the zoning ordinance's Article I definitions as the vertical distance from the mean ground level to the highest point of a flat roof, the deck line of a mansard roof, or the mean level between eaves and ridge for hip and gable roofs, and that definition excludes parapet walls of four feet or less, chimneys, cooling towers, elevator penthouses, mechanical rooms, cupolas, standpipes, and domes or spires from the height count.