Utah County, UT Outdoor Lighting: Billboard Lighting (2026)

24 confines non-accessory signs, meaning billboards, to the I-1 Industrial Zone; they are not a permitted use in any residential, commercial, or agricultural zone in the unincorporated county. Within I-1, the ordinance sets structural limits before it reaches lighting: billboard structures must be separated by not less than 500 feet from another such non-accessory sign structure, and each structure may have a maximum of two sign faces which must oppose each other. On illumination specifically, the county does not write its own brightness, timing, or shielding standard for billboards the way it does for ordinary accessory signs, which must use back-lighting or shielded light sources and may not flash.

24 states plainly that non-accessory signs, or billboards, may be illuminated as per the current state code, pointing operators to the Utah Outdoor Advertising Act, Utah Code Title 72, Chapter 7, Part 5, and the Utah Department of Transportation's Outdoor Advertising Control Program rules that implement it for billboards visible from a state route. A billboard owner in the I-1 zone therefore has to satisfy two layers: the county's siting rules (500-foot separation, two opposing faces, and the setback and sight-distance review the County Engineer performs for any sign near frontage) and whatever lighting intensity, timing, or glare limits the state's current outdoor advertising rules impose.

Because the county's own rule is a reference rather than a fixed number, the applicable brightness or curfew standard can change whenever the state updates its rule, without Utah County having to amend its own code.