Hamilton, NJ Outdoor Lighting: Billboard Lighting (2026)

G(2)(h) sets specific hours and hardware limits for lighting outdoor advertising signs in the highway-adjacent zones where such signs are permitted. Illumination 'shall be permitted and restricted to the hours of operation from sunset to 12:00 midnight,' meaning a billboard's lighting must go dark at midnight regardless of season and cannot be turned on again before sunset the same evening or the next day. On the hardware side, each sign face can be illuminated by 'no more than three four-hundred-watt fixtures,' and those fixtures must be 'placed at the bottom of the sign face and angled upwards toward the sign face,' a ground-lighting configuration rather than downlighting from above.

3 footcandle at night, measured with automatic dimming controls tied to ambient light. Together, the two subsections mean a lit billboard along I-195 or I-295 in Hamilton is capped both in when it can shine and, if it is an EMC unit, how bright its display can get relative to ambient darkness.