Santa Barbara County, CA Home Business: Customer Traffic Restrictions (2026)

190, which apply to any legally established dwelling in any zone, including nonconforming dwellings. 1 unless it qualifies for the narrow exemption in Subsection E. 1 development standards: only one home occupation per dwelling, all activity confined to the enclosed living space or an accessory structure, no employees beyond the dwelling's own occupants, no signage identifying the business, noise capped at 65 dBA at the property line, and business deliveries capped at two per week. The five-person cap does not apply to in-home retail sales events run under the Subsection E exemption from the Zoning Clearance requirement; those events instead follow a looser but still numeric limit of no more than 25 customers at a time and no more than four such events per calendar year.

Every other home occupation, from a hair stylist seeing clients to a tutor running lessons, stays capped at five people on-site at once regardless of appointment scheduling, and back-to-back visits that overlap on the property still count toward the five-person ceiling.