Orange County, FL Outdoor Lighting: Light Trespass & Shielding (2026)

Every nonresidential or commercial project has to submit an exterior lighting plan and photometric plan, prepared and certified by a licensed professional engineer, before the county approves it (§ 9-649(a)(1)). The core light-trespass rule sits at § 9-649(a)(5): illumination at the property line can't exceed 0.5 footcandles at any point where the site abuts a residential use, or 1.0 footcandle next to any other use, and on-site lighting at roadway access points is capped at 3.6 footcandles. To keep light off adjoining land, fixtures must carry house-side shielding and be maintained so distribution stays on the property; floodlights are banned outright except for shielded fixtures at noncommercial industrial uses, and sag lenses, convex lenses and drop lenses are prohibited entirely (§ 9-649(a)(4)).

The parking-area rules add a second layer of trespass protection specifically for acorn-style fixtures, a common decorative pole light: § 9-649(b)(2)b caps them at eighteen feet and 19,000 lumens, and any acorn fixture within eighty feet of single-family-zoned property must have internal globe shielding, field-adjusted to minimize off-site light intrusion onto the adjacent parcel. Non-residential lighting also has to dim automatically, cutting to roughly half its output no later than one hour after the business closes (§ 9-649(a)(6)). Before a certificate of occupancy issues, § 9-651 requires a licensed engineer, architect or landscape architect to certify the installed lighting actually performs to the approved plan, and any decision of the Building Official under this article can be appealed to the Building Codes Board of Adjustments and Appeals under § 9-652.