Montgomery, AL Outdoor Lighting: Billboard Lighting (2026)

b of Article IX, adopted under Alabama's 1971 Highway Beautification Act, sets three lighting rules for outdoor advertising structures in the adjacent area of an interstate or primary highway. First, signs cannot be erected or maintained if they contain, include or are illuminated by any flashing, intermittent or moving lights; the only exception is a display giving public service information such as, but not limited to, time, date, temperature, weather or news, which is the narrow path most digital message displays rely on. Second, a sign's illumination has to be effectively shielded so that beams or rays are not directed onto the traveled way of the highway, and the light cannot be intense or bright enough to cause glare or impair a driver's vision.

Third, a sign cannot be so illuminated that it obscures or interferes with an official traffic sign, device or signal. These lighting rules sit alongside the article's separate size (1,200-square-foot maximum face), spacing (1,000 feet between structures on interstates) and height (50-foot) limits in Section 3, and apply to every sign that qualifies for the article's business-area exception; a sign that fails the lighting test does not qualify as an allowed outdoor advertising structure even if it otherwise meets the size and spacing rules. The lighting requirement carries no separate numeric brightness or dimming standard of its own; the operative test is whether the light flashes, moves or glares rather than a photometric limit.