Chattanooga, TN Outdoor Lighting: Dark Sky Rules (2026)

Sec. 38-47(a) requires a lighting plan for every nonresidential, mixed-use and multi-unit development, showing pole and fixture locations, cutoff angles, and, where the site sits next to a residential zone, photometric footcandle measurements at the lot lines. Sec. 38-47(b), the Lighting Standards, sets the numeric limits: the maximum allowable footcandle at any lot line is one footcandle, all luminaires must be full cutoff luminaire design, and the maximum total height of a freestanding luminaire is 20 feet in a nonresidential zone and 15 feet in a residential zone. Fixtures covered by a required lighting plan must also keep their correlated color temperature at or below 3200 Kelvin, a warmer, less blue-shifted light than typical white LED fixtures, though outdoor recreation fields are excluded from that color rule.

Sec. 38-47(c) carves out several exceptions: public roadway lighting installed by a utility, temporary emergency lighting for public safety agencies or construction, shielded accent or uplighting aimed at a facade or sign (capped at the same one-footcandle lot-line limit), motion-activated security lighting that shuts off within 15 minutes of the area clearing, and outdoor recreational fields such as ball fields or tennis courts, which can use luminaires up to 65 feet tall but must extinguish field lighting within one hour after an event ends. Sec. 38-47(d) bans flickering or flashing lights, searchlights and laser-source lights, and any light fixture that could be mistaken for a traffic control device, plus neon or LED outlining of doors, windows, architectural features and facades.