Kirkland, WA Sign Regulations: Digital Billboards (2026)

85(1)(f) puts moving and electronically-driven signage on the city's prohibited-devices list, alongside flashing lights, twirlers and search lights. That single clause is the operative rule for digital billboards: absent an exception, an electronic display whose message physically changes by mechanical or electrical means is unlawful anywhere in Kirkland. Subsection (2)(e) carves out one path around the ban: "Changing message centers when included as part of a master sign plan" are exempt from the prohibition in (1)(a) through (1)(k). 80, so a digital billboard cannot simply be permitted like a static sign; the property has to first secure master sign plan approval covering the whole development's signage.

Even once exempted from the moving-sign ban, a changing message center still has to clear the city's illumination standards. 110 lists prohibited lighting techniques for all signs, including continuous or sequential flashing operation and exposed incandescent lamps over 25 watts; subsection (4) singles out changing message centers as the one sign type allowed to use incandescent lamps inside an internally-lighted cabinet, which the code otherwise bans for every other sign type. 115 confines the term to "an electronically controlled sign where copy changes are shown on the same lamp bank," meaning the exception is written narrowly around the technology, not around content or size. 90, which gives the owner 30 days to correct after notice.