Harrison County, MS Outdoor Lighting: Light Trespass & Shielding (2026)

01 of the Harrison County Unified Development Code opens with the county's stated purpose for regulating outdoor lighting: 'New lighting technologies have produced lights that are extremely powerful, and these types of lights may be improperly installed so that they create problems of excessive glare, light trespass, and higher energy use... 02 converts that purpose into binding standards: all exterior lighting must be 'designed, located and lamped in order to prevent: over lighting, glare, energy waste, light trespass, and sky glow,' every fixture must use a full cut-off luminaire with the light source downcast, and the main beam of any exterior light must stay within the owner's own property line.

03, requiring them to be fully recessed or fully shielded so the light source itself isn't visible. 01, motion sensors, street lighting, ball-field and driving-range lighting, and FAA-mandated aviation lighting, still has to minimize upward lighting and glare 'to the greatest extent possible,' so nothing in the code is entirely free of the dark-sky standard.