Southfield, MI Sign Regulations: Holiday Displays (2026)

Southfield City Code § 5.22-4 sets out a detailed set of rules for signs and commercial building lighting: no moving or flashing lights or stationary light bands around windows or doors, no lighting fixture that creates a traffic hazard, no lighting that has motion or gives the impression of motion such as running, blinking, scintillating, or expanding and contracting light patterns, brightness caps for accent and neon lighting measured in foot candles, and district limits on where visible neon and fiber-optic lighting can go. Then, in subsection (7), the ordinance carves out one clean exception: decorative lighting used for the celebration of recognized holidays shall be allowed in all zoning districts and is not subject to the above regulations.

That single sentence removes holiday lights from every restriction the rest of § 5.22-4 imposes, including the motion and flashing ban in subsection (3), the brightness ceiling in subsection (10), the neon placement rules confined to the city centre, downtown development authority area and specific road corridors in subsection (6), and the review-process requirements for accent lighting in subsection (5). Because the exemption applies in all zoning districts, a homeowner in a single-family district and a business on a commercial corridor both get the same pass for holiday displays; the ordinance draws no line based on district, property type or how long the display stays up.

The section sets no start or end date for when holiday lighting must come down, so nothing in § 5.22-4 itself creates a seasonal deadline for taking decorations off a house or storefront.