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

Troup County doesn't use the word "billboard," but its Unified Development Ordinance regulates the same structure under the heading "interstate signs" in Section 10.7: a freestanding sign allowed only along I-85, only on a lot of at least one acre zoned Light Industrial (LI) or Heavy Industrial (HI), capped at 75 feet in height and 400 square feet per face (800 square feet total across faces), set back no more than 100 feet but at least 10 feet from I-85 and 40 feet from other property lines, and permitted by Troup County Building, Zoning and Planning in coordination with the Georgia Department of Transportation.

On lighting specifically, Section 10.7(g) flatly states that interstate signs "shall not be changing signs," so a billboard along I-85 cannot use digital, LED, or any electronically or mechanically changing display; the brightness rules built for message-changing signs in Section 10.8, with 5,000-nit daytime and 500-nit dusk-to-dawn caps and mandatory automatic dimming, don't apply here because this sign type can't use that technology at all. Instead, every interstate sign's lighting is governed by the general illumination rule in Section 10.6(4), which applies unless a more specific standard says otherwise: no sign may be illuminated by lights that flash, move, change intensity, or turn on intermittently more than once a day, and the beam of any light must be directed so it isn't visible beyond the sign itself, with the light source not visible from any point on an adjacent property or the public right-of-way.

In practice that means a billboard's floodlights or gooseneck fixtures have to be aimed and shielded onto the sign face only, with no bleed onto neighboring parcels or oncoming traffic lanes, and the sign can't flash, dim and brighten, or cycle.