Parker, CO Outdoor Lighting: Dark Sky Rules (2026)

Section 13.08.110 states its purpose plainly: providing adequate safety lighting while minimizing light pollution, light trespass, and glare townwide. The rule applies in every zoning district, with exemptions in Subsection (c) for luminaires of 900 lumens or less, Town-installed street and traffic lighting, temporary holiday and construction lighting, flag and public-art lighting, and airport navigational lighting; single-family, single-family attached, and duplex properties are exempt from the shielding and trespass standards in Subsections (d) through (f) but still cannot exceed 900 lumens per fixture. For everything else, Subsection (e) sets the core dark-sky standards: no single lamp or luminaire may exceed 25,000 lumens, light sources must be color-correct with a correlated color temperature below 5001 Kelvin, and every fixture must be shielded with a full cutoff design directed ninety degrees downward from true vertical, with no more than ten percent of total lumens measurable at or above eighty degrees above vertical.

The Planning Director can grant an exception to the cutoff angle, but not to the lumen cap. Subsection (e)(8) adds a lighting curfew: illumination must be reduced at least seventy percent one hour after a business closes and stay reduced until an hour before it reopens, a rule that exempts residential uses and parks, which instead dim fifty percent after activity ends. Nonconforming fixtures installed before these standards took effect are governed separately under Section 13.01.070(f)(1), and all fixtures must be kept in working, undamaged condition under Section 13.08.130(a)(8).