Gulfport, FL Outdoor Lighting: Billboard Lighting (2026)

Sec. 12(a) requires every permanent sign and its illumination to be designed, built and maintained to the city's adopted building and electrical codes. Subsection (b), the illumination standards, sets two rules that reach any lit sign in the city, including a billboard-style display were one ever permitted: sign lighting cannot be designed or located so it could be confused with a traffic light, and floodlight or spotlight illumination is allowed only so long as none of the light shines directly onto an adjoining property or into the eyes of motorists or pedestrians using or entering a public street.

Because off-site advertising signs are separately prohibited under Sec. 08(a)(6), these illumination standards mainly govern the lighting on wall, freestanding and monument signs for on-site businesses, but they set the baseline any sign lighting has to meet. The same section's location and clearance standards require signs over two feet tall within a visibility triangle to clear at least eight feet from the ground, signs over pedestrian ways to clear at least eight feet, and signs over vehicular ways to clear thirteen feet six inches, so a lit sign has to satisfy both the glare rule and the physical clearance rule at once.