Beaufort County, SC Business Licensing & Operations: Adult Entertainment (2026)

20, layering locational standards onto whatever zone otherwise allows the use as a conditional use. An additional 20-foot perimeter buffer is required on all sides of the lot beyond the district's normal buffer. The use must sit at least 1,000 feet from any residential development located outside its own zone, a church, a school, a public building or a day care center, and it must be a full mile from any other adult-oriented business, a spacing rule that effectively caps how many can operate in the unincorporated county at once.

The minimum lot size is one acre, and the site can only be accessed from an interior street within a development, never directly from an exterior road, which pushes the use away from public rights-of-way. Signage is capped at 60 percent of what the district otherwise allows and must be a monument sign; a printed notice large enough to read on entry must be posted at the building entrance warning that an adult-oriented business is inside and that the activities or materials may not meet community decency standards.

' Because these standards layer on top of the underlying zoning district's use table, an applicant still needs the district to permit the use before the spacing and buffer rules come into play.