Porterville, CA Outdoor Lighting: Light Trespass & Shielding (2026)

Section 300.07.A frames light trespass as one of the ordinance's two core goals, alongside dark-sky protection: the rules exist "to reduce the unnecessary illumination of adjacent properties and the use of energy." Section 300.07.H turns that goal into specific bans rather than leaving it to the general shielding standard. Subsection H.1 shuts off outdoor recreational facility lighting, public or private, at 11:00 p.m., with a narrow carve-out letting a ball park, outdoor amphitheater or similar venue finish a game or event that started before 11:00 p.m. Subsection H.2 bans unshielded illumination of any building or landscaping altogether, the kind of uplighting most likely to spill glare across a property line, unless the fixture is incandescent and rated sixteen hundred lumens or less.

These trespass-specific bans sit on top of the general shielding duty in Section 300.07.E, which already requires fixtures to avoid producing obtrusive glare onto adjoining properties or the public right-of-way and to meet IESNA cutoff standards. Multi-family and pedestrian-oriented lighting required elsewhere in the section, such as the 0.25 foot-candle minimum for apartment walkways under Section 300.07.F, still has to satisfy the shielding and curfew limits in H, so a property can't use a lighting mandate elsewhere in the code as an excuse to spill light onto a neighbor's yard.