Lee County, FL Outdoor Lighting: Billboard Lighting (2026)

Lee County's Land Development Code addresses billboard illumination in LDC Sec. 30-183(9), inside the standalone billboard-standards section that also sets location, spacing, size, height and setback rules for these structures. The rule permits illumination but conditions it: if the sign uses external lighting such as floodlights, thin-line or gooseneck reflectors, the light source has to be directed onto the face of the sign and effectively shielded so beams or rays never fall into any portion of the street right-of-way. That is the entire externally-illuminated-billboard standard; the code does not set a footcandle cap or curfew for billboard faces the way it does for general outdoor lighting under Sec.

14-71. A companion rule at Sec. 30-183(10) lets a billboard operate as a revolving sign, but forbids animation or flashing devices, and Sec. 30-183(11) blocks the Board of Zoning Adjustment from granting any variance from subsections (1) and (6) through (10), which locks in the illumination shielding standard along with the roof-sign ban, copy-area rule, single-face-per-structure limit and revolving-sign condition. Billboards themselves are confined to specific corridors: I-75, Alico Road west of I-75, and Metro Parkway, and are barred outright from roads such as Ben C.

Pratt/Six Mile Cypress Parkway and Summerlin Road under Sec. 30-183(1). Enforcement of the sign chapter runs through Lee County's code compliance process, and violations of any Land Development Code provision, including an unshielded or misdirected billboard floodlight, are subject to the county's general Chapter 2 enforcement track (code compliance citation, magistrate hearing and correction order) rather than a stand-alone sign-specific fine schedule.