Arapahoe County, CO Sign Regulations: Holiday Displays (2026)

The exemption for holiday lighting is written directly into Chapter 7's Definitions rather than as a stand-alone lighting section, but the Land Development Code treats several Chapter 7 entries as operative rules, and 'Light Bulb Strings and Exposed Tubing' is one of them: it flatly prohibits exterior displays built from exposed light bulbs, festoons or strings, and neon or gaseous light tubing, whether the tubing is open or housed in a transparent or translucent cabinet, with one carve-out for temporary decorative holiday lighting. 6, which require any fixture emitting more than 900 lumens to be fully shielded from adjacent properties and rights-of-way and cap building and sign illuminance at 10 foot-candles measured at the source.

Those numeric limits govern permanent exterior lighting; a holiday display, because it is temporary and decorative, is exempted from the bulb-string/tubing ban by its own terms. The distinction that matters for a resident or business is duration and purpose: a strand of exposed bulbs put up for the holidays and taken down afterward is not the prohibited fixture type the definition targets, but a permanent installation of exposed bulb strings or neon tubing used as accent or signage lighting year-round falls squarely within the ban and is treated the same as any other nonconforming exterior light fixture under Chapter 4's lighting standards. This rule governs only unincorporated Arapahoe County; incorporated cities within the county set their own sign and lighting codes.