Fence height and placement rules, and why they change at the town line

Height is set by the yard, not by the fence

The first thing to understand about a fence code is that it is not really about the fence. It is about which part of your lot the fence is standing in.

Almost every ordinance in these five counties that publishes heights at all publishes four of them: a front yard, a corner side yard, an interior side yard, and a rear yard. The same fence, made of the same material, gets a different answer depending on which of those four it runs through. That is why a homeowner who asks how tall a fence can be gets a question back instead of a number.

The front yard is where towns get strict, and where they most often set two limits at once. It is common for a front yard rule to cap the height and require the fence to be substantially see-through, so the fence has to satisfy both. The openness half is stated several different ways, and each is a genuinely different requirement:

• A percentage of opacity. Oglesby and Spring Valley both pair a front and corner side yard height with a fifty percent opacity cap in their residential and agricultural districts, so a solid panel is out of the question in that yard regardless of how low it is.
• A percentage of openness. Bureau County's fencing rule (opens in a new tab) for the land it zones asks for at least fifty percent open in front of the house. Henry caps a front yard fence and requires it to be at least seventy percent open at the same time. Dixon uses the same figure differently, raising its front yard allowance only where the fence is at least seventy percent open or vertically louvered.
• A limit on obstruction. Streator writes it from the other end at 15.52.010(B): a front yard fence may not be built so as to obstruct visibility through more than seventy-five percent of its surface when viewed from a perpendicular angle.
• A named type. Mendota's zoning ordinance at 340-8(8) requires a front yard fence to be an "open" fence and separately bars chain link from front yards altogether. Toluca requires open or rail construction in a front yard at 9-4-6(D).
• Nothing at all. Ladd's height table, added by Ordinance 1072, reads "None allowed" for a residential front yard and again for a residential corner side yard. That is the outer bound of the pattern, and it is worth knowing that it exists: the strictest front yard answer available is not a low fence, it is no fence.

Two things quietly change which yard you are in, and both catch people. A corner lot has a second street frontage, and codes handle it by treating that frontage as its own front. Streator says so directly: all corner lots shall treat each street frontage area as a separate front yard. Paw Paw reaches the same place differently, capping a fence at three feet on any side of the building adjacent to a street, with a fence facing an alleyway excepted.

The second is an alley behind the house. Oglesby amended its height table by Ordinance No. 1212-040323 on 3 April 2023, and the amendment did one narrow thing: it pulled a rear yard that abuts an alley out of the rear yard row and into the front and corner side yard row. In an older Illinois Valley town, where alleys are common, that single clause moves a lot of back yards from the most generous row in the table to the strictest. Any account of Oglesby's heights that predates 2023 is stale on exactly that point.

A height table is a ceiling, not a permission

This one matters more than it looks, and it is the mistake that a homeowner reading their own code is most likely to make.

A height table is a list of prohibitions. "Shall not exceed six feet" forbids exceeding six feet. It does not authorise a six foot fence, and it certainly does not authorise one anywhere on the lot. To build at the limit you need a provision that permits the fence in the first place, and the height table is not it.

Paw Paw is the clearest illustration. Chapter 149 sets a six foot ceiling on fences in all districts, and the sentence that follows mentions a residential front yard. Read quickly, that looks like permission for a six foot fence between the house and the street. It is not, and three separate things cut against reading it that way. The section opens with the words "Except as otherwise specifically set forth in this Code," so it yields to more specific provisions elsewhere. The corner lot limit in the same section is three feet on any side of the building adjacent to a street, which on a corner lot includes the front. And section 149-5 imposes a separate duty with no numbers in it at all: every fence shall be kept in good repair and shall allow sight visibility at the street and at all intersections. A tall solid fence between a dwelling and the front property line is the single most likely fence in that chapter to fail the last one.

So the honest statement is that a front yard fence in Paw Paw is a village office question, and that is the honest statement about a lot of front yards. Read a height table as the most a fence could ever be in that yard, then go and find out whether that yard allows a fence at all.

The number is the easy part. Measured from where is not.

Here is the part that is almost never explained anywhere, and the reason two towns quoting the same number are frequently not describing the same fence.

A height needs a starting point, and codes do not use the same one:

• From the crown of the pavementDixon measures a corner lot fence from the crown of the pavement at the intersection, at 7-9-6(A).
• Above the established street gradesThe City of LaSalle uses this datum in its zoning chapter at 153.046(B)(3).
• Above curb levelPeru's corner rule at 10.01(d)(5) measures the obstruction above curb level, and measures the distance from the edge of the pavement rather than from the lot corner.
• Above existing gradeOttawa caps a fence or wall citywide, in every zoning district, above existing grade, at 118-2(h)(2).
• From the low side of the groundSpring Valley at 14-6-12(B) measures from the ground at the base of the fence to its highest point, taken from the lower side, and where the ground differs across the line of the fence by two feet or more it sets a separate minimum for the portion standing above the high side.

Those are five different questions wearing the same clothes. On a lot that sits above the street, a fence limited to a height above street grade is a materially shorter fence than the same figure measured at its own base. On a lot that slopes across the run, a fence measured from the low side is taller on the low side than the number suggests and shorter on the high side. Neither of those is an edge case in this part of the state.

One more, and it is the one that surprises people who have already done the arithmetic. Dixon at 7-9-12 adds a retaining wall's height and the height of the fence sitting on top of it together. If your back line is a wall with a fence above it, you are not working with the fence number alone.

So when you ask what the height limit is, ask the second half of the question in the same breath: measured from where. Get both into your scope of work, and check the answer against the ground the fence is actually going to stand on.

The corner is where every code gets strict, and none agree on the geometry

Every code that regulates sight lines is trying to do one thing: stop a fence hiding a car from a driver. They all agree on the goal and none of them agree on how to describe the space.

The geometries found across these five counties fall into four families, and knowing which family your code uses is most of the work:

• A triangle struck back along the property lines. Streator at 15.52.010(D) measures fifteen feet back from the intersection along each property line and draws a diagonal between those two points, and no fence is allowed inside the resulting triangle. Oglesby at 14-6-14 uses a thirty foot triangle, and grows it to fifty feet where the corner meets an arterial road or a railway, so even inside one town the triangle changes size with the road.
• A distance from the road rather than from the lot. Peru measures thirty-five feet from the edge of the pavement of the intersecting streets. Putnam County measures seventy-five feet from the center of the intersection, along the centerline of each road. Those two are measuring from different objects, and a homeowner pacing it out from the wrong one gets a different answer.
• A zone where only one kind of fence is allowed. Dixon at 7-9-6(B) bars everything but a split rail fence within thirty-five feet of the corner of a corner lot. Not a height limit, a material limit, in a defined space.
• No number at all. Ottawa at 118-2(h)(3) says only that fences on corner lots and lots abutting public ways shall not interfere with the clear vision of pedestrians and motorists. There is no distance and no height anywhere in that subsection. Paw Paw's 149-5 works the same way. These are performance standards, judged by the village, and they cannot be checked with a tape measure.

Then there is the case that should make anyone cautious about quoting a single corner figure for a town. Two jurisdictions here publish two corner rules, in two documents, that both bind.

The City of LaSalle has one in its building regulations at 150.40(B)(1)(b)3, measured from the curb, and another in its zoning chapter at 153.046(B)(3), measured from the street intersection and reaching plantings as well as fences. The first was amended in 2015. The second descends from a 1958 ordinance carried into the 1963 Code. They are not contradictory, because both are prohibitions and neither permits anything, which means a corner fence in LaSalle has to satisfy both at once. We will not print one of them as the LaSalle corner rule, because publishing them as a conflict would invite a homeowner to choose the looser one, and that is the failure this guide exists to avoid.

Amboy is in the same position, with a corner visibility provision in its Code of Ordinances and a different one, with different numbers and a wider reach, in its Zoning Book. Both have to be checked.

So the practical rule for a corner lot is the same everywhere, whatever the code says: this is a conversation with the building office before material is ordered, not a measurement you take yourself off a table. If your parcel is in unincorporated LaSalle County, the county publishes interactive zoning and parcel maps (opens in a new tab) that will at least show you the lot and the streets it fronts before you make that call.

Where the fence may actually sit, from on the line to five feet back

The other half of a fence rule is horizontal, and this is the one that costs a homeowner yard.

There is a genuine spectrum across these five counties, and it runs from the boundary itself to a good way inside it:

• Directly on the line. Dixon allows a fence on a side or rear lot line and its own permit form carries an owner attestation to that effect. Mendota's 340-8(8) allows a fence on the lot line with the decorative surface facing outward, and adds that if the lot line cannot be determined the owner must pay for a survey. Paw Paw allows a fence right up to the line and says in terms that the village takes no responsibility for where that line actually is.
• A stated offset, back from the line. Hennepin requires twelve inches. Oglesby requires eighteen. Toluca and Ladd both require two feet. Lee County allows a fence on a side or rear line but requires two feet back from a front or street-side line, and Dixon requires two feet from any lot line abutting a street even though it allows the line itself elsewhere.
• Completely inside the lot, posts and bases included. Spring Valley at 14-6-12(A), North Utica at 10-16-4(A)(2), Lacon at 153.092(H)(1) and the City of LaSalle all use some version of this wording. It is worth reading carefully, because "inside the lot" is stricter than it sounds: the concrete around the posts has to be inside it too.
• Setback traded against height. Amboy is the only jurisdiction in this set that prices one against the other. The ordinary residential limit is four feet. A six foot fence is available, but only in a side, rear or corner side yard, and only where it stands at least five feet inside the property line.

Work out what that costs you before you like the idea. On a narrow lot, a two foot offset on both sides is four feet of yard that ends up outside the fence, and it is still yours to mow. A five foot offset for a taller fence is a different proposition again. None of this is a reason not to build. It is a reason to draw it on paper first.

Several of these codes let a neighbor agreement move the fence onto the boundary after all, and one of them dictates what that agreement has to contain. That, and the question of who is responsible for knowing where the line runs in the first place, is its own subject.

Which side faces out, and what the fence may be made of

Two more categories, and both are settled in the ordinance rather than by taste.

Which side faces out. Most codes in this area have a view, and they state it in one of two ways that describe exactly the same fence. Some say the decorative side must face outward: Ladd, Lacon, Oglesby at 14-6-12(D)(3), Spring Valley, Granville, and Mendota all use some form of that. Others say it from the inside: Peru at 6.03(b)(1) requires all vertical and horizontal supports and bracing to face the interior of the lot, Streator at 15.52.010(G) requires the unfinished side to face the interior, and Henry and the City of LaSalle put the framing and posts on the owner's side. Amboy requires the finished side outward on every boundary. Toluca writes both halves into one sentence at 9-4-6(B), putting the supports, posts and beams on the owner's side and the cosmetic side toward the neighboring property. A few codes carry a narrow exception where the posts are an integral part of the design.

If your ordinance states only one half of that, it has still told you which way to hang the panels.

What it may be made of. This is a real question here and not a formality, and the restrictions come in two forms.

The first is a ban list, and the lists are not all the same length. Barbed wire and electrified fencing are prohibited by name in most of these codes, Lacon, Amboy and the City of LaSalle among them, the last of those with narrow non-residential exceptions. Oglesby and Spring Valley extend the ban to razor wire and concertina as well. Ottawa splits it, barring razor wire in every district and restricting barbed wire and electrified fencing by district at 118-2(h)(4). Some go considerably further than wire. Chain link is barred from the front and corner side yard in Oglesby and Spring Valley, and from front yards in Mendota. Paw Paw's banned list runs to sheet metal, concrete block, salvage material, and woven or welded wire on T-posts, which rules out the ordinary farm fence inside the village. Toluca adds one sentence that needs no explanation: no pallet type material may be used.

The second form is a closed list of what is allowed, which has the same effect without naming anything as banned. Streator's 15.52.010(H) restricts fence material to board panel, picket, split rail, wrought iron, chain link, heavy woven wire or masonry. Amboy requires new material and requires it to resemble the fences already in the neighborhood, with the building inspector and the ward aldermen judging whether it does. Under a closed list, the question is not whether your material is prohibited. It is whether it is on the list.

Four things to settle before anyone orders material

Four questions. Put them to whichever office has your parcel, and get the answers into your scope of work before anything is ordered.

• Which yard is each run of this fence in, by the code's definition rather than mine? A code's front yard is often measured from the front of the dwelling rather than from where you would draw it, and a corner lot may have two of them.
• What is the height limit for each of those yards, and what is it measured from? Ask both halves. The second half is the one nobody volunteers.
• How far off the property line does the fence have to sit, and does that distance change if I go taller?
• Is any part of this run inside a sight triangle or a corner clear zone? If the answer is yes, or if the answer is a judgement rather than a distance, that is the part of the job to settle first.

One more thing belongs in the same week and it is not a zoning question. JULIE, the Illinois 811 one-call service (opens in a new tab), asks for a locate request at least three days before you want to dig, and installing a fence is one of the projects it names.

Then get all four written into the scope of work rather than agreed on the phone. A specification is something you can hold somebody to; a conversation is not. That argument is worked through properly in how to read a fence quote, and it applies to code compliance exactly as it applies to material grade.

What each of the towns we serve publishes is on that town's own page, taken from the town's own source and dated, with an honest note wherever the source could not be found. Everything on this page is the shape those answers come in. The answer for your address comes from your address.

Related questions

Xcel Outdoor Living builds fences and decks across Bureau, LaSalle, Putnam, Marshall, and Lee counties, Illinois. Call 815-579-2323 to walk your fence line.