Outdoor lighting in Noblesville is governed by §159.201 (Lighting) of the Noblesville Unified Development Ordinance (UDO), which is codified as Chapter 159 of the Noblesville Code of Ordinances. §159.201 provides verbatim: "All on-site lighting of buildings, lawns, and parking areas shall be designed so as not to shine or cause glare in excess of 0.5 footcandle onto any adjacent building or property, or onto any public street or vehicle thereon. Additional regulations relating to minimum parking lot lighting may be found in §§ 159.140 et seq." There is no Noblesville-specific full-cutoff fixture mandate, color temperature (Kelvin) cap, or dedicated dark-sky lighting plan submittal requirement in §159.201 - the rule is a single bright-line property-line glare standard. The Noblesville Planning Department administers the UDO during site-plan review. Indiana has no statewide dark-sky law for private property; the only Indiana International Dark Sky Place is Beverly Shores Indiana Dunes State Park (designated 2018) - Noblesville is not on the DarkSky International roster of certified dark-sky communities. For ROW-adjacent and parking-lot illumination, §159.140 et seq. provides additional minimum-lighting standards reviewed during site plan submittal.
Noblesville's outdoor-lighting regulation is concentrated in a single short ordinance: Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) §159.201 (Lighting), part of UDO Chapter 159 (codified in the Noblesville Code of Ordinances and administered by the Noblesville Planning Department; 317-776-6325). The full text of §159.201 provides: "All on-site lighting of buildings, lawns, and parking areas shall be designed so as not to shine or cause glare in excess of 0.5 footcandle onto any adjacent building or property, or onto any public street or vehicle thereon. Additional regulations relating to minimum parking lot lighting may be found in §§ 159.140 et seq." This is a property-line glare/spillover cap of 0.5 foot-candles measured at any adjacent building, property line, or public street - significantly stricter at the residential property line than the Apex NC residential cap (0.3 fc) only in form (Apex applies 0.3 fc only to residential property lines and 1.0 fc to non-residential/ROW; Noblesville applies a single 0.5 fc cap to all adjacent property and rights-of-way). §159.201 does NOT impose: a full-cutoff or fully-shielded fixture mandate; a maximum mounting height for poles; a correlated color temperature (Kelvin) cap; lumen output limits per fixture or per pole; BUG-rating requirements; or a dedicated dark-sky lighting plan and PE/CLEP certification. The §159.140 et seq. parking-lot lighting standards (typically requiring minimum maintained foot-candle averages for safety) apply alongside the §159.201 spillover cap. The Noblesville Planning Department reviews lighting plans during Site Development Plan submittal under UDO Article 6 (Site Design and Improvement Standards). Indiana has no statewide outdoor-lighting law for private property; the Indiana General Assembly has not adopted dark-sky legislation analogous to Colorado HB 22-1107 or California's PG&E AB 32-related lighting mandates. Indiana has only one current DarkSky International-certified site: the Indiana Dunes State Park at Beverly Shores (certified Dark Sky Place in 2018). The closest International Dark Sky Park to Noblesville is approximately 165 miles north at the Indiana Dunes. The Noblesville Code does not regulate single-family residential exterior lighting other than through the §159.201 property-line glare standard, which applies generically to "on-site lighting of buildings, lawns, and parking areas." For complaints about a neighbor's spotlight or landscape lighting shining onto another property, the standard remedy is a complaint to Noblesville Code Enforcement (317-776-6325) under §159.201.
Violations of UDO §159.201 are enforced by the Noblesville Planning Department / Code Enforcement (Noblesville City Services Center; 317-776-6325) during Site Development Plan review and post-Certificate-of-Occupancy. Common violations: a commercial property's parking-lot pole lights or building wall-pack lights causing glare or producing more than 0.5 foot-candles measured at an adjacent property line or public street; landscape spotlights at a single-family home aimed across the property line at a neighbor's bedroom window; LED billboards or signage exceeding 0.5 foot-candles spillover. Noblesville does not impose a separate full-cutoff fixture mandate, so a high-glare unshielded fixture is not per se a violation - only the measured property-line spillover matters. Penalties for UDO violations follow Chapter 159's general enforcement framework: a written Notice of Violation with a cure period, followed by daily fines if not corrected.
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