Knoxville, TN Outdoor Lighting: Billboard Lighting (2026)

Article 13, Section 13.2 of Knoxville's zoning code, adopted as part of the Recode Knoxville rewrite, opens with a flat statement: 'The following signs are prohibited in all zoning districts.' Item H on that list is 'Billboards and other off-premise signs,' which the code defines elsewhere in Article 2 as a type of off-premise sign with more than 100 square feet of display surface, whether ground-mounted or attached to a building or structure. No new billboard can be permitted anywhere in the city.

Lighting gets its own prohibition in the same section. Item E bars any illuminated sign within 100 feet of property in a residential zone district unless the sign is designed so its illumination doesn't shine or reflect onto that residential property, a rule that would apply to a legally existing billboard's lighting just as it does to any other sign. Knoxville's general sign-illumination standards (Section 13.5.C) separately cap externally illuminated signs at 75 footcandles of surface illumination in residential districts and internally illuminated signs at 200 footcandles elsewhere.

Because the citywide ban only reaches new signs, a small number of off-premise signs approved before 1984 remain lawful nonconforming structures under Article 17.2.B: they must sit on a single unipole (no double-decking), cap out at 672 square feet per face (775 within 500 feet of an interstate), and keep at least 750 feet from the next off-premise sign on the same street, or 1,000 feet on an interstate artery.