Auburn, WA Sign Regulations: Digital Billboards (2026)

020(D) as electronically controlled message centers that display different copy on the same lamp bank. m. No more than one changing message center sign per street frontage is permitted per property, and outside the I and P-1 zones the changing display cannot make up more than 75 percent of a sign's total face area. Display speed is tightly controlled: copy cannot change more rapidly than once every one and one-half seconds, and no scrolling message may take longer than five seconds to display in full.

Signs must carry ambient light monitors that automatically dim the display, capped at 8,000 nits maximum during daylight hours and 500 nits maximum between dusk and dawn, and all lighting must be arranged to reflect away from residential zones. Content is restricted to on-premises products and services or public service and nonprofit messages; off-premises advertising on a changing message center is not allowed. Older signs that predated the brightness and display-speed standards had to come into compliance by April 1, 2009 under the chapter's amortization clause.