Columbia County, GA Outdoor Lighting: Dark Sky Rules (2026)

Section 90-100 establishes Columbia County's node protection overlay district (NPOD) program, which layers design standards, including a dedicated lighting subsection, onto commercial development within designated nodal areas such as the Evans-to-Locks Road and Furys Ferry Road (EL/FF) NPOD. The lighting subsection opens with an explicit purpose clause: lighting in the overlay must be designed to minimize light intrusion onto neighboring properties and to preserve dark night skies, language that goes beyond a typical glare rule and directly targets light pollution.

Six specific standards implement that purpose. Full cut-off light fixtures, meaning fixtures that direct light downward and prevent it from spilling upward or sideways, are required for every street light and pedestrian light in the overlay. Parking lot light fixtures are capped at 26 feet in height, and pedestrian-scale light fixtures are capped lower still, at 14 feet, keeping the fixtures human-scaled within the walkable node. Taller lighting is permitted only along public roadways where the Georgia Department of Transportation requires it, carving out a narrow exception for state road standards that would otherwise conflict with the 26-foot cap. The overlay also requires white spectrum lighting that preserves true color perception, rather than the orange-tinted sodium lighting that distorts colors at night, and it encourages, without mandating, accent lighting on architectural and landscape features. These lighting rules sit alongside the overlay's broader streetscape standards, which separately require lights spaced at least every 40 feet along the street buffer, two of every three of them pedestrian-style fixtures matching the historic, decorative character required of streetlights in the node.