Cupertino California Residential Lighting Guide

Introduction – Cupertino California Lighting Design Requirements

Designing the perfect lighting for your home in Cupertino, California, involves more than just choosing stylish fixtures—it requires understanding local zoning regulations, homeowner association rules, and energy efficiency standards.

This comprehensive guide covers everything you need to know, from the latest residential lighting options of 2025 to essential factors like Color Rendering Index (CRI), dimmer compatibility, and energy code compliance.

Whether you’re upgrading your interior or outdoor lighting, we’ll help you navigate the key requirements, avoid common pitfalls, and select the best solutions to create a well-lit, energy-efficient home that aligns with Cupertino’s lighting regulations.

Table of Contents

• Design Requirements for Cupertino Residential Lighting
• Zoning & Planning Requirements – Cupertino Residential Lighting
• Home Owner Associations & Deed Restrictions
• Best Residential Lights of 2025
• How Many Lights Will I Need?
• What to Look For In a Quality Light
• Color Rendering Index
• Dimmer Compatibility
• Energy Efficiency Requirements
• Works Cited

Residential Lighting Design Requirements for Cupertino California

Cupertino Zoning & Planning Requirements for Residential Lighting

OUTDOOR LIGHTING REQUIREMENTS – CUPERTINO

When submitting a project subject to outdoor lighting regulations, you’ll need to provide a site plan showing the lighting fixtures’ locations, detailed descriptions of each fixture, and photometric plans certified by a licensed engineer. These plans should include the lighting levels across the site and its impact on nearby properties, while also ensuring coordination with landscaping to avoid conflicts. The Director of Community Development can waive some requirements if deemed unnecessary.

OUTDOOR LIGHTING STANDARDS – CUPERTINO

Outdoor lighting must be fully shielded and directed downward to prevent light trespass, with some exceptions like low-voltage landscape lighting, architectural uplighting, and public art lighting, which have specific guidelines. Light intensity is restricted, with maximum illumination levels for different areas and requirements to prevent light spill onto neighboring properties. All outdoor lighting must be turned off or controlled by motion sensors by 11:00 p.m., with a few exceptions for critical areas or certain uses permitted to operate later. Security lighting is allowed but must meet strict guidelines, such as downward direction, height limits, and motion-sensor control. String lighting is also subject to regulations, with specific restrictions on its use in residential and commercial areas, including limitations on illumination area and visibility from public rights-of-way.

PROHIBITED LIGHTING – CUPERTINO

Certain types of outdoor lighting are prohibited, including blinking, flashing, or rotating lights (except as allowed in Chapter 10.26), flood lights that shine above the horizontal plane, and lighting that causes unnecessary light trespass or interferes with neighboring properties. High-intensity discharge lights for private recreation courts and spotlights are also not allowed.

LIGHTING EXEMPTIONS – CUPERTINO

Certain types of lighting are exempt from the lighting requirements, including lighting within public rights-of-way and parks, sign lighting permitted under Chapter 19.104, temporary construction or emergency lighting, and short-term lighting approved by a special events permit. Holiday lighting is also exempt from October 15 to January 15, and required lighting to comply with the Building Code, Fire Code, or state law must follow those standards as well, while also adhering to this Chapter where allowed.

Home Owner Associations, Deed Restrictions, Covenants and Easements

After reviewing any planning/zoning requirements required by the city, it is important to also check whether your property is subject to any Homeowners Association (HOA) rules, deed restrictions, easements, or covenants which could impose additional requirements on exterior lighting.

Some communities have specific guidelines about the types of fixtures allowed, such as prohibiting motion detector lights or requiring specific energy-efficient bulbs. Others may have restrictions for light brightness or the direction of light, aiming to reduce light pollution or preserve the character of the neighborhood.

Be sure to review these documents carefully to ensure compliance and avoid potential conflicts with your HOA or neighbors.

Best Residential Lights of 2025: Cupertino, California

If you’d like help getting started, feel free to start with the lighting library I use for my own projects. I have listed these out in the images below, and I have vetted each of these lights for quality. Each light is UL Listed, has a customer rating of at least 4 out of 5 stars, and a color rendering index (CRI) of 90+.   

 – Steve Duncan, AIA | Architect & Lighting Designer​​

How Many Lights Will I Need?

To figure out how much illumination is needed for each room in our design, we can do a quick calculation. It only takes a couple minutes. First follow the link to our lighting estimators here. It’s easy and straightforward. You’ll need to know the dimensions of the room, what kind of room is being designed (kitchen, dining, etc.), and also what kind of vibe you want for your design (relaxed, bright, cinematic, and so on).

If you’d like to see a demonstration of how the estimators work, you can watch the video below:

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You may be wondering how we know if a space will be bright enough. Well, the footcandle targets for a room are set by the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA), and the International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD). This professional organization has studied and analyzed the functional requirements for each kind of space designed by architects. For residential projects, I like to refer back to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory & Department of Energy’s footcandle targets, since those are made freely available to the public. These are the targets I use for my own projects, and are the basis for the lighting estimators on this website. ​

You don’t want to have too little light. It’s expensive for a contractor and electrician to come back after the fact to revise the lighting strategy and patch the walls/ceiling. This happened to an interior designer early in my career, and it wasn’t a fun situation. For me, it was the beginning of a great collaboration with this design professional, because we worked on many projects after that – but of course it would have been better if this interior designer hadn’t made that mistake to begin with. ​

Likewise, you also don’t want to be too bright, and overspend on lighting, just because you’re unsure of what is needed and hoping for the best (yikes!). 

This is fundamentally why I created lighting estimators – to balance making sure there’s enough light, while also making sure a client isn’t paying for too many lights. Hopefully using the calculator was straightforward. Reach out with questions (before buying/building anything), if you’d like help! Good luck on your project!​​

-Steve Duncan, AIA​

Architect & Lighting Designer

What to Look for in a Quality LED Light for Your Cupertino Residential Lighting Design

Regardless of the vibe you are going for, there are three things that can trip up designers when they are selecting LED lighting for projects in Atherton. ​

COLOR RENDERING INDEX (CRI)

If you only remember one thing from me, please remember that color rendering is EVERYTHING when it comes to lighting. If you love incandescent and halogen lights, but hate fluorescent, then color rendering is the reason.​

We always want to find lights that have a color rendering (CRI) of at least 90, so that we can bring out the true color of our room finishes and decor. Many LED lights have a color rendering of 80, and this score is actually worse than fluorescent (which has a score of 82). As you can see in the image below, the true color of the wood is brought out with the light on the right, which has a score of 90. The red tones of the wood come through and it feels warm. In contrast, the light on the left makes the wood look a bit greenish and yellow, because it has a poor color rendering score of 80.​

Trust me! It’s worth it to spend just a little bit more on lights to make sure that you’re getting LEDs with a score of 90 or higher, so that the people and finishes in your spaces feel vibrant and full of life. Make sure to pay attention to this when you find a light you like and you’re ready to hit that “order” button.

DIMMER COMPATIBILITY

If you want maximum functionality, make sure that the LEDs you select are dimmable. This is something you need to check in the product cut sheet or through the web store that you are browsing. ​

Also, you’ll need to make sure that the dimmer you select will be compatible with the LED light fixture.  In the past, we could easily dim incandescent and halogen lighting with a simple rotary dimmer. This may or may not work for a new LED light fixture.  

You wouldn’t expect your television remote to be able to turn on your stereo system, would you? The same is true for LED dimmers. You have to make sure that the dimmer switch can actually communicate with the light fixture.  

There’s a variety of dimming protocols: it may be TRIAC, Electronic Low Voltage (ELV), 0-10 Volt, or DALI. So make sure to work with your electrician or a sales representative to make sure that the components of your lighting design are all compatible. 

ENERGY EFFICIENCY & ENERGY CODE COMPLIANCE

In California, residential lighting projects are subject to the energy efficiency requirements of the Title 24, specifically Joint Appendix Section 8 (JA8). You may have seen some light fixtures marketed as JA8 compliant, which means they deliver a minimum of 45 lumens of light, for every watt of energy used. These lights are referred to as being high efficacy. It’s a good idea to review the energy code adopted by Cupertino, based on the 2021 Building Energy Efficiency Standards as published by the California Energy Commission. Another option is to reach out to your electrician for guidance, or use the Energy Code Hotline, before finalizing your lighting design.

Works Cited – Cupertino Residential Lighting

Duncan, Steve. Why Is It Important to Do a Lighting Calculation? Lighting Design Insights. LightingJUMP.com. Accessed 9 Nov. 2024.

California Energy Commission. 2019 Building Energy Efficiency Standards for Residential and Nonresidential Buildings. California Energy Commission, 2019.https://www.energy.ca.gov/programs-and-topics/programs/building-energy-efficiency-standards. Accessed 9 Nov. 2024.

City of Cupertino, California. Zoning Ordinance, Section 16.32.100: General Lighting Requirements. Cupertino Municipal Code. https://codehub.gridics.com/us/ca/cupertino#/d3ef8742-594e-4e92-bb0d-0fbb09d855bd/68dadeb1-0691-4c82-a9e1-11e6e40f268f. Accessed 9 Nov. 2024.

City of Cupertino, California. Zoning Ordinance, Section 16.32.110: Development Standards for Specific Types of Accessory Buildings & Structures. Cupertino Municipal Code. https://codehub.gridics.com/us/ca/cupertino#/d3ef8742-594e-4e92-bb0d-0fbb09d855bd/68dadeb1-0691-4c82-a9e1-11e6e40f268f. Accessed 9 Nov. 2024.

City of Cupertino, California. Zoning Ordinance, Section 16.32.140: Plant Coverage and Tree Sizes – Screening Lighting. Cupertino Municipal Code. https://codehub.gridics.com/us/ca/cupertino#/d3ef8742-594e-4e92-bb0d-0fbb09d855bd/68dadeb1-0691-4c82-a9e1-11e6e40f268f. Accessed 9 Nov. 2024.

City of Cupertino, California. Zoning Ordinance, Section 16.32.150: Objective Building and Design Requirements for Dwelling Units. Cupertino Municipal Code. https://codehub.gridics.com/us/ca/cupertino#/d3ef8742-594e-4e92-bb0d-0fbb09d855bd/68dadeb1-0691-4c82-a9e1-11e6e40f268f. Accessed 9 Nov. 2024.

National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) in Residential Lighting. NREL/TP-53467, 2012.https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/53467.pdf. Accessed 9 Nov. 2024.

Illuminating Engineering Society. Standards. Illuminating Engineering Society, 2024.https://store.ies.org/individual-standards/?v=0b3b97fa6688. Accessed 9 Nov. 2024.

International Association of Lighting Designers. About the IALD. International Association of Lighting Designers, 2024.https://iald.org/IALD/IALD/About/About-the-IALD.aspx?hkey=104e951f-5da0-4cb8-8ca8-8cce8a7b4caf. Accessed 9 Nov. 2024.