National City, CA Outdoor Lighting: Dark Sky Rules (2026)

Section 18.46.030 sets the baseline for outdoor lighting in National City: every fixture must be designed, shielded, aimed, located, and maintained to shield adjacent properties and to produce no glare onto adjacent properties or roadways, and parking lot fixtures and building-mounted fixtures must be full cut-off. Flashing, revolving, and intermittent exterior lighting and internally illuminated signs are prohibited, along with outdoor searchlights, lasers, and strobe lights. Multiple family residential, commercial, and industrial sites must still be well lit to provide safe pedestrian and vehicular access and to eliminate dark areas.

The chapter's stated purpose (§ 18.46.010) is to reduce the impacts of glare, light trespass, overlighting, skyglow, and poorly shielded or inappropriately directed fixtures. Outdoor lighting is regulated by the Land Use Code and by the State of California Title 24 Energy Efficiency Standards. The chapter applies to new land uses, developments, buildings, structures, and additions that require a permit (§ 18.46.020), and when a nonconforming use is abandoned for one year and then recommenced, its lighting is reviewed and brought into compliance. Applicants file an exterior lighting plan with the planning division that includes manufacturer cut sheets, mounting heights, aiming points, and a computer generated photometric grid with foot-candle readings every ten feet within the site and ten feet beyond the property lines, plus the IESNA 'cut-off' designation where applicable (§ 18.46.040).

Specific fixture rules follow. Security lighting must be shielded and aimed so illumination is directed only within the owner's property boundaries, never above a horizontal plane through the top of the fixture, with shields that keep the light source or lens from being visible from adjacent properties and roadways, and it combines timers with dusk-to-dawn photocells (§ 18.46.050). Parking lot fixtures must be full cut-off as defined by the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America to direct light downward and minimize light spilled into the dark night sky, with a maximum mounting height of thirty feet (§ 18.46.080). Main lighting at sports and recreation facilities cannot remain on longer than thirty minutes after an event ends (§ 18.46.090).