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

33, Hillside Development Standards, which applies to new lots, tentative maps and grading in the city's hillside areas rather than to the city as a whole. 180(B)(8), covering standards for new residential streets in hillside subdivisions, requires that street lighting be directionally shaded to reduce off-site fugitive light and glare, and it caps streetlight standards at 30 feet in height unless the public works and community development departments approve something taller. 190(B)(6), part of the landscaping-plan design standards for hillside development, requires that exterior lighting around the primary building on a site be the minimum necessary to provide for the safety of pedestrians and other nonvehicular uses, and directs that landscaping be used to reduce the long-range visibility of night lighting from the site.

Both provisions were adopted through the hillside ordinance (Ord. 798, 1994) and the street lighting language was carried forward unchanged; the exterior lighting rule was last amended by Ord. 1109 in 2008. Outside hillside areas, the code does not contain a general shielding, lumen-cap or dark-sky standard for residential or commercial exterior lighting; adult-related businesses and signs carry their own separate foot-candle illumination rules under different chapters, and general commercial site plans must simply disclose the location, design and intensity of proposed exterior lighting to the community development department for design review rather than meet a numeric ceiling.

Because Folsom borders Folsom Lake State Recreation Area and undeveloped hillside terrain east of the city, night-sky protection is functionally concentrated in the hillside chapter rather than applied as a blanket city ordinance.