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

Carroll County's Corridor Development Plan ordinance (Code § 102-16, codified at Appendix A) sets outdoor lighting standards for non-residential and multi-family development inside the county's designated transportation corridor overlay in unincorporated Carroll County. 1(B) requires parking-area lighting on box-head, fluted poles capped at 24 feet, though the county engineer may authorize taller fixtures, and requires hooded pedestrian fixtures under 14 feet along walkways. 5 footcandles of illumination measured five feet inside an adjacent owner's property line. Subsection (D) adds a companion no-visible-lamp rule for every fixture except streetlights: the lamp itself cannot be visible to an observer standing at or above the fixture's ground-line elevation from any point more than five feet inside the neighboring lot.

Subsection (E) requires all fixtures to aim downward, prohibiting any light cone wider than 120 degrees total or angled more than 60 degrees from vertical, which stops upward or outward spill toward neighboring parcels. 1(G) requires lighting cut-sheets for every new exterior fixture before a permit issues. Because this is the Corridor Development Plan, it governs only property within the county's mapped transportation corridor, not every unincorporated parcel countywide, and it never reaches inside Carrollton, Villa Rica, Temple, Bowdon, Whitesburg, Mount Zion or Roopville, each of which enforces its own lighting rules under its own municipal code.