Decatur, GA Home Business: Customer Traffic Restrictions (2026)

Decatur's UDO regulates home occupations under Article 6, Sec. B, and two of its fourteen standards deal directly with customer traffic. Sec. B(7) caps in-person contact with the public at no more than two visitors inside the dwelling at any one time, so a home-based consultant, tutor or stylist can't run a waiting room of clients. Sec. , which rules out late-night appointments even if the resident is willing. The code carves out one exception for creative businesses: Sec. B(9) lets "artists and other studio type operations" host a "studio tour" style open house once a month, when members of the general public may visit to see the artist's work.

Beyond visitors, the same section limits commercial deliveries to the home occupation to no more than 20 per week and bars any exterior sign larger than a 24-square-inch nameplate, so a home business can't advertise its way into more foot traffic than the rule allows. Every home occupation also needs a City business license under Sec. B(4), the mechanism the Zoning Administrator and Business License division use to know a home-based business exists in the first place and to check it against these standards. Because the UDO doesn't distinguish by district, a home occupation anywhere in the City of Decatur, from an R-85 single-family lot to a townhouse, follows the same two-visitor, no-midnight-appointments framework; DeKalb County's own code applies only to properties outside the city limits, including many nearby addresses that read "Decatur, GA" on the mail but sit in unincorporated DeKalb County.