Decatur, GA Sign Regulations: Holiday Displays (2026)

Sec. 3 of the City of Decatur's Unified Development Ordinance, Applicability, describes the outdoor lighting the Site Lighting article regulates and then, in subsection B, lists lighting exempt from the shielding and aiming standards in Sec. 4, the use-specific illuminance limits in Sec. 5, and the rest of the article's requirements. Item 4 on that exempt list is temporary holiday lighting, grouped with interior lighting, pool lighting, lighting required by the Federal Aviation Administration, emergency lighting, and motion-triggered security lighting of ten minutes or less.

Because holiday lighting sits on the exempt list rather than under the standards themselves, the UDO does not specify how many days before or after a holiday the lights may go up, how bright they may be, or how they must be aimed, unlike the article's separate rule for temporary searchlights, which Sec. 2 caps at 8 hours within a 24-hour period for no more than 3 consecutive days per calendar year. A resident stringing holiday lights on a house or in a yard in the City of Decatur, DeKalb County, Georgia, is not required to satisfy the flood-lamp aiming angle in Sec.

A, the off-site spill limits set for athletic fields in Sec. 3, or the architectural-accent shielding rule in Sec. E that otherwise governs decorative building lighting. The exemption does not reach other code requirements: installation must still meet the Building Code and Electrical Code under Sec. 2, and lights strung in a way that becomes an electrical hazard or that are affixed to a public right-of-way fixture can still be addressed under the City's separate encroachment provisions. Because no duration or brightness limit applies specifically to holiday displays, this is a permissive, largely unregulated corner of the sign and lighting code rather than one bounded by a numeric standard, and it should not be confused with the searchlight rule, which is far more restrictive.