Bulloch County, GA Outdoor Lighting: Light Trespass & Shielding (2026)

Article 14 of the Zoning Ordinance (Appendix C), 'Supplemental Standards for Specific Uses,' attaches the same lighting requirement to nearly every commercial and industrial use it regulates: all outdoor lighting fixtures must be recessed and downcast and cannot produce glare or a nuisance to drivers or the surrounding properties. The clause appears, worded identically, in the standards for building material dealers, commercial vehicle washing facilities, contractors, drive-through facilities, electric vehicle charging stations, extended stay hotels, junk yards and salvage yards, liquor stores, manufactured home dealers, and mini-warehouse and self-storage facilities, among others; Section 1427(k), governing extended stay hotels, is one example of the standard text.

Because the requirement travels with the underlying use rather than sitting in one stand-alone lighting ordinance, a property owner cannot rely on a single citywide light-trespass limit; instead, whichever supplemental-use section applies to the specific business on the lot carries its own recessed-and-downcast, no-glare-or-nuisance obligation. That structure means a junk yard, a gas station, a self-storage facility and an extended stay hotel are all held to the identical fixture standard even though each sits in a different section of Article 14, and Planning and Development checks compliance with the applicable section's lighting clause as part of site plan review for that specific use before a certificate of occupancy issues.