Alameda, CA Outdoor Lighting: Dark Sky Rules (2026)

16(c), titled the Alameda Dark Skies Ordinance, sets performance standards for outdoor lighting citywide with the stated purposes of allowing adequate illumination for safety and enjoyment of outdoor space, preventing excessive light and glare, minimizing light's harm to human health, astronomy, and the night sky, and reducing light that disorients migrating birds during the ordinance's defined bird migration season of February 15 to May 31 and August 1 to November 30. The core shielding standard in subsection (c)(3)(a) requires all exterior lighting fixtures to be fully shielded and directed downward.

Three narrow exceptions apply: low-voltage landscape lighting used on fountains, shrubbery, trees, and walkways may go unshielded if it uses no more than sixty watts, or a twelve-watt LED equivalent, and emits no more than seven hundred fifty lumens per fixture; uplighting on special architectural features, historic structures, public art, and monuments may go unshielded if each lamp uses under one hundred watts, or a twenty-watt LED equivalent, and emits under one thousand six hundred lumens; and fixtures that are historic or exhibit a historic period appearance, as the Planning Director determines, don't need to be fully shielded at all.

The same subsection separately caps LED color temperature at 2,700 to 3,000 Kelvin, the warm end of the spectrum, and requires security lighting to use shielded fixtures. These standards apply to all new and existing land uses in every zoning district under the general performance-standards applicability rule in subsection (a).