Santa Clarita, CA Outdoor Lighting: Billboard Lighting (2026)

005(D)(7)(a) sets the City's only local illumination standard for digital billboards, applying wherever the Council has approved a billboard reduction and relocation agreement authorizing a digital display in the BR overlay zone along Interstate 5 and State Route 14. 3 foot candles above ambient lighting, measured from a distance of 250 feet, for both daytime and nighttime conditions, and brightness independently may not exceed 500 nits (candela per square meter) from sunset to sunrise. Outside that sunset-to-sunrise window, the absolute ceiling rises to 7,500 nits.

Because the standard is written as an added-light-over-ambient test as well as a hard nit cap, an operator has to dim the display as ambient light drops at dusk and cannot rely on a single fixed brightness setting around the clock. This brightness limit sits inside the same digital-billboard conditions that also require still images held at least 8 seconds with no motion or flashing (Subsection (D)(7)(b)) and 2,500-foot spacing between digital faces (Subsection (D)(7)(c)); the lighting cap is enforced as one of the conditions of the underlying billboard reduction and relocation agreement or development agreement rather than as a stand-alone permit. ), which prevails over the local standard in the event of conflict.