Peoria, AZ Outdoor Lighting: Light Trespass & Shielding (2026)

Section 21-302(F), the Zoning Ordinance's Exterior Lighting standard, exists to cut light pollution, glare and pole height across the city, and it applies to every outdoor fixture, including parking lot, landscape, building and sign lighting. Freestanding fixtures cannot exceed 16 feet in a residential zoning district or 25 feet in any other district, though the height cap is waived for ball fields, golf driving ranges, outdoor arenas, amphitheaters and public parks. The core light-trespass protection sits in paragraphs 4 and 5: a fixture in a commercial or industrial district has to be shielded so its light source cannot be seen from a neighboring residential district and produces no spillover there, and it must stand at least 10 feet back from that residential boundary.

Inside residential neighborhoods, any fixture, including a homeowner's yard or security light, must point down and be shielded so its illumination source is not visible from any adjacent property, not just a residential one. Wall- and ground-mounted sign lighting carries the identical downward-shielding, not-visible-from-adjacent-property standard. Every new development submittal must include an outdoor lighting plan showing compliance with both this section and the separate Dark Sky Ordinance at City Code Chapter 20, Sections 20-60 through 20-67, which layers on fixture-shielding and filtering rules aimed at reducing glow visible from astronomical observation sites.