Washington County, MD Outdoor Lighting: Billboard Lighting (2026)

24(c)(7) of the Washington County Zoning Ordinance sets a residential buffer for outdoor advertising signs that scales with illumination. A non-illuminated billboard must stay at least 500 feet from any adjacent property zoned for or containing dwellings, hospitals, nursing homes, schools or other residential institutions for human care; an illuminated sign doubles that distance to 1,000 feet from the same protected uses. 24(b)(2), which requires every outdoor advertising sign, illuminated or not, to be static: flashing, scrolling, rotating, or changing light intensity or color is prohibited outright, as is any tri-vision or other mechanical sign face.

Together the two provisions mean a billboard owner who wants to light a face has to both site the structure farther from residential and institutional uses and keep the illumination fixed rather than animated. 24(c): a 300-square-foot face cap, 30-foot height limit, and exclusion from the RT, RS, RU, RM and MX residential zoning districts and the county's designated highway corridors. 11 site plan process, which requires a map of every existing sign within 1,000 feet of the proposed location.