Spalding County, GA Outdoor Lighting: Billboard Lighting (2026)

Appendix G, Article 2, the Spalding County Outdoor Lighting Ordinance, regulates billboard lighting under Sec. 201-5.B, 'Outdoor advertising signs and other signs.' A billboard erected after the ordinance's effective date must be illuminated from the top down, and the vertical illuminance produced by that lighting is capped at fifty-five (55) footcandles. If a billboard's lighting is knocked out by damage, Sec. 201-5.B.2 requires that lighting be brought back into conformance with the ordinance once the sign's function is restored, so an owner cannot leave nonconforming fixtures in place after a repair.

Sec. 201-5.B.3 requires the light source for any sign to be effectively shielded from adjacent residential properties and streets, and separately limits illumination measured in a vertical plane above five feet at a residential property line or right-of-way to 0.5 footcandles, a far stricter cap aimed at keeping glare off neighboring homes. Sec. 201-5.B.4 bars flashing, blinking, rotating, or moving objects on signs, whether powered electrically or created by solar reflection, within 150 feet of a street. These billboard rules sit inside the broader outdoor-lighting standard, whose definitions section, Sec.

201-1, defines footcandle as one lumen per square foot and defines the cutoff and full-cutoff luminaire types used elsewhere in the ordinance to control glare and sky glow. Roadway and street lighting near a billboard is separately required to be full-cutoff under Sec. 201-5.C, except that period or historical luminaires may use cutoff or semi-cutoff fixtures.