Palm Beach Gardens, FL Outdoor Lighting: Light Trespass & Shielding (2026)

Table 1 in section 78-182(b)(2) of the Palm Beach Gardens Code sets minimum, average, and maximum foot-candle levels for every lighting zone in the city, from service station canopies to parking garages, and note (4) to that table addresses what happens at the boundary with a home. The property line itself carries a maximum average of 2.0 foot-candles and a maximum allowed reading of 5.0 foot-candles, but note (4) adds a separate, tighter ceiling for the far side of that line: no more than 0.5 foot-candle of light spillover is permitted at any point inside the adjacent residential property.

That is a light-trespass standard measured on the neighbor's land, not just at the property boundary, and it applies regardless of which lighting zone generated the light, whether a parking lot, a service station canopy, or building accent lighting. The city measures compliance under the method in section 78-182(g): a light meter read at ground level after dark, first with the light source on and then off, with the difference compared against the permitted level for the zone. A lighting plan that would push spillover above 0.5 foot-candle onto a residential lot has to be redesigned or shielded before Growth Management issues the building permit, and this 0.5 foot-candle cap functions independently of the cutoff-luminaire and house-shield hardware rules in the same section.