Home Occupations
If you use your home as your primary base of business operation, please read the following guidelines and restrictions regarding operating a business from your home. If you are planning to make any changes to the interior or exterior of the home, or if parking or signs are proposed, you will need to contact the Planning Division. To apply for a business license, apply online or download the Business License Application.
Guidelines
Guidelines for operating a home occupation:
- Be a good neighbor. If you are planning to start a home occupation, please let your neighbors know, and be sensitive to any impact your new business may have on their home environment.
- Please keep traffic to a minimum.
- Keep it simple. It should not be obvious that you are conducting business in your home. If it becomes an issue you will need to consider moving the business to a retail / commercial office space.
City Code Restrictions
There are restrictions in the Planning and Land Development Ordinance (Wilsonville's Development Code) on home occupation. The following is the section of the code related to home occupations:
- Home Occupation means an occupation, profession, or craft, which is customarily incidental to or carried on in a dwelling place or premises and not one in which the use of the premises as a dwelling place is largely incidental to the business use.
- A home occupation is carried on by an immediate member of the family residing within the dwelling place. A home occupation shall require no structural alteration or changes to the exterior of the dwelling, and shall include no display of merchandise on the premises which can be seen from the exterior of the dwelling.
- Any instruction shall be limited to one pupil at a time.
- Noise, odor, smoke, gases, fallout, vibration, heat or glare resulting from the use shall not be of the intensity as to be detected outside of the containing structure.
- Traffic and parking are to be such as to give no outward appearance that a business is being conducted on the premises.
- Further specified for Home Occupation:
- Section 4.156.05(.02)(B.)(1.): A sign pertaining to a home occupation shall be subject to the following standards and conditions:
- Surface area shall not exceed three square feet.
- The sign shall be located inside the dwelling (ii.e., visible through a window) or affixed to the dwelling.
- One such sign per occupant is allowed.
