Mebane, NC Outdoor Lighting: Dark Sky Rules (2026)

The standard sits in UDO § 6-6, Outdoor Lighting, adopted to control glare and light trespass onto neighboring properties and public streets. Subsection D's general standards say fixtures must generally be full cutoff, meaning the light source and its direct beam stay below the fixture housing, and mounting height is capped at 35 feet above grade. A narrow exception lets a developer use non-cutoff, decorative fixtures, but only if each one produces no more than 1,500 lumens, roughly a 100-watt incandescent bulb, stands no taller than 18 feet, and runs on an energy-efficient lamp such as LED or compact fluorescent.

The same subsection layers on measurable limits: light spilling onto an adjacent residential property line from a nonresidential use cannot exceed 0.2 foot-candles, the cap rises to 1.5 foot-candles at a nonresidential or right-of-way boundary, and the correlated color temperature of exterior lamps cannot exceed 4,000 Kelvin except for sports-field and event lighting. Wall-mounted fixtures aimed at a residential lot line must be full cutoff, and every project with parking areas must submit a photometric lighting plan certified by a licensed lighting professional before the Zoning Administrator will approve it, with timer devices required to cut or dim lighting after normal business hours and extra protection for residential neighbors after 10:00 pm.