Tustin, CA Outdoor Lighting: Billboard Lighting (2026)

Tustin City Code Section 9404b(7)(7) requires that all freeway adjacent digital display billboards comply with applicable laws and regulations concerning brightness, expressly including California Vehicle Code Section 21466.5, which is the state brightness standard the City folds into its own conditional use permit conditions for these signs. The same subsection's display-cycle rule at 9404b(7)(8) works alongside the brightness requirement: a billboard may show a series of still images, each displayed for at least eight seconds, and the images may not move or present the appearance of motion, and may not use flashing, scintillating, blinking or traveling lights or any other means not providing constant illumination, with transition or blank-screen time between images capped at one second.

Outside this narrow freeway-adjacent digital billboard category, Tustin's general sign maintenance rules in Section 9405g1e require electric signs to be indirectly illuminated, either from the interior, behind letters, by channel lighting from finished grade, or another indirect source, and state that illumination is excessive and not permitted when it prevents normal perception of nearby buildings or shines directly onto residential zones or a public or private right-of-way. Digital billboards are only authorized at all through the conditional use permit and development agreement process of Section 9404b(7), so their brightness compliance is a condition of that permit rather than a stand-alone lighting ordinance, and a billboard operator who violates the brightness or flashing rules risks the same enforcement track used for any nonconforming sign.