West Covina, CA Sign Regulations: Holiday Displays (2026)

0) foot candles above ambient illumination levels onto another residential property, and so that glare spillover does not negatively impact a neighboring residential property. Ordinarily, a homeowner whose landscape lighting, floodlights, or accent lighting pushes past that threshold, measured five feet above natural grade on a vertical plane on the neighbor's property, can be required by the Community Development Director to relocate the fixture, dim it, add hoods or shields, or otherwise mitigate the glare. Subsection (b)(4) carves out a specific exception for holiday displays: the spillover and glare restrictions of the entire subsection do not apply to decorative, temporary, seasonal incandescent lights that are in place and in use during the period running from November 1 through January 31.

0 foot-candle cap that governs the rest of the year. The exemption is narrow in three ways: it covers only decorative and temporary installations, it is limited to incandescent lighting, and it runs only from November 1 to January 31, so a display left glowing into February, or a permanent architectural lighting scheme dressed up as year-round 'holiday' lighting, falls back under the standard spillover rule and its enforcement process. The seasonal carve-out sits inside the same section that also allows the Community Development Director to require photometric data and review for other lighting sources, such as sports court lighting, underscoring that the holiday exemption is a deliberate, narrow departure from an otherwise actively enforced lighting standard.