Franklin County, KY Outdoor Lighting: Light Trespass & Shielding (2026)

The Franklin County Fiscal Court placed the light-trespass rule inside the parking standards of the zoning chapter, not in a stand-alone lighting ordinance. It is paragraph (8) of subsection (I), Landscaping, within § 155.333, Off-Street Parking, Facility Design Standards. That section opens by applying to any case where required off-street parking calls for a parking lot, and wherever a parking lot is built, so the lighting duty attaches to the lot owner or developer.

The operative words are three verbs: designed, erected and maintained. The duty therefore starts at the layout stage, covers the physical installation, and continues for as long as the fixtures stay in service. The test is whether light or glare is directly cast upon an adjacent property or a public right-of-way. The county code does not print a footcandle, lumen or mounting-height figure anywhere in the chapter, so the standard is a qualitative one measured at the property line and the road edge.

The subsection that holds the rule explains its purpose: landscape areas are required in parking lots in order to achieve better traffic control and eliminate glare. Two neighboring paragraphs work with the lighting rule. Paragraph (6) requires a landscape buffer where a parking facility abuts residentially used or zoned property, either a strip of evergreen trees at least six feet tall at time of planting or a privacy fence. Paragraph (7) requires parking facilities to be screened from the public right-of-way by a three-foot minimum height screening of landscape material.

Two related lighting provisions elsewhere in Chapter 155 are narrower. Section 155.114(F) requires drive-in theater parking areas and access ways to be adequately lighted, with the lighting shielded to prevent any glare or reflection onto a public street or onto neighboring properties. For signs, § 155.357 bars any illuminating device from being maintained in any way other than the method for which it was designed and approved by the County Department of Planning, Zoning and Building Code Enforcement, and § 155.361(B) requires a permit application to include specifications for the sign's lighting. Frankfort has its own code and is not covered here.