Washington County, UT Outdoor Lighting: Dark Sky Rules (2026)

Washington County's outdoor lighting ordinance, Title 10 Chapter 15C (Ord. 2024-1271-O), imposes mandatory shielding standards in the county's four designated dark-sky districts named in § 10-15C-2: the New Harmony Valley Overlay Zone, Pine Valley Overlay Zone, Scenic Byway Overlay Zone, and the Kolob Area. Within those districts, § 10-15C-4(A) requires every permanent and temporary outdoor fixture installed after the ordinance's effective date to be fully shielded and installed so no light is emitted above the fixture's horizontal plane; where the manufacturer publishes a BUG (backlight-uplight-glare) rating, the uplight component must equal zero.

Floodlights, spotlights, uplights and any unshielded fixture are banned outright under § 10-15C-4(D) unless an exemption elsewhere in the chapter applies. Countywide, outside the designated districts, the general provisions in § 10-15C-2 still forbid projecting light directly into the night sky. Developers and homeowners inside the overlay zones must submit a lighting plan with every subdivision, site plan or building permit application under § 10-15C-9(A), showing fixture locations, heights, lamp types, and, for commercial projects, photometric diagrams. Existing nonconforming fixtures in the designated districts are grandfathered but must be replaced with a compliant fixture the next time they fail, per the amortization rule in § 10-15C-10(A); the Community Development Director may approve a matching nonconforming replacement only to keep a site's fixtures uniform. Fixtures exempted from the shielding rule, such as flag lighting and non-flashing temporary string lights, still count toward the chapter's total light-output cap.