Artificial turf in Brighton, CO, installed while the citywide sod ban holds.

Use the length; keep the rest of the yard useful.

A deep yard can offer a longer putting line without needing a wide green. Think about where you will stand and where a chipping area would fit, then compare that layout with the lawn and planting you want to retain.

In an older property with alley access or a detached garage, walk the delivery route with us. A convenient route can change the proposed installation method and belongs in the estimate.

Show us the low spots after rain.

For a property toward the river or Barr Lake, bring any known drainage or flood information for the lot. Elsewhere in Brighton, the same practical check applies: show where water collects rather than assuming a particular soil from the address.

Check the City and any association requirements for the complete proposal. Turf does not need to grow roots, but that does not make it exempt from landscape or grading review. Ask for unresolved site conditions to be written down before work begins.

Until October 2026, new sod is off the table.

Brighton's Stage 1 drought order prohibits installing or replacing sod on more than 200 square feet through 30 September 2026 (City of Brighton). The ban is on sod. Artificial turf isn't sod, so a new lawn can still go in while the order stands.

From 1 October the city issues free sod permits, and each one comes with a strict six-week schedule: up to three waterings a day of no more than 10 minutes for the first two weeks, up to two a day for the next two, outside the 10-to-6 window, then once a day, and after that the full restrictions again. A turf lawn skips all six weeks, because there's nothing to root.

If City of Brighton Water serves your address, the same order sets your watering days through 15 November 2026: even house numbers Tuesday and Friday, odd numbers Wednesday and Saturday, unassigned addresses Monday and Friday, and no irrigation between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. unless the property holds one of those sod permits from 1 October 2026. Two warnings come first, then a fine of $125, $500 or $1,500 depending on the size of your tap, and a summons after that. The city pays nothing toward artificial turf; its landscape help runs to $25 off a Garden in a Box (City of Brighton).

Twenty percent out front. Out back, the code pulls two ways.

Brighton names artificial turf in its own Land Use & Development Code, so the limits here come from the city rather than from a water utility's rebate terms. Table 8-1 in Section 8.02 lets a detached house, duplex or row house lay artificial turf in the frontage — the ground between the building line and the street — and limits it to 20% of that frontage area (City of Brighton). Out back the same table names no percentage: it lists artificial turf among the materials you may use across the rest of the lot, on its own or mixed with planting. Section 8.04 pulls the other way, asking every landscape plan for “a living ground cover of at least 50% of the landscape area” (City of Brighton). Artificial turf is not living cover, so read that back yard row against the 50%, not on its own.

Whether those standards reach your job is the next question, and Section 8.01 answers it. They apply to new development, and they exempt improvements to a detached house or duplex that need no Site Improvement or Residential Design Review and are not part of a larger neighborhood or subdivision plan (City of Brighton). A new build on a platted subdivision lot is a different case from a re-landscape behind an older Main Street house. Ask Brighton Community Development which of the two your address falls under, and how they apply the 50% living cover rule to a back yard. Get both answers in writing before the layout is fixed.

Most of Brighton drains well. The river side doesn't.

Across most of town the USDA maps Dacono loam and Vona sandy loam: level, free-draining ground with little shrink-swell, Vona about two-thirds sand (USDA Soil Data Access). Swelling clay isn't the Brighton problem it is on Thornton's shale breaks.

Toward the South Platte and the Barr Lake side, the survey maps Aquolls instead: poorly drained ground with a high water table. A turf base there needs a proper drainage layer, or the lawn sits wet.

So the first question on a Brighton visit is which side of that line your yard is on. The base follows the answer: simple on the loam, with a drainage layer on the river ground.

Where those code standards apply, Section 8.04 also sets what the surface itself has to do: the turf and any underlayment must percolate at least 5 inches an hour, and the liner and bedding must stay permeable so water reaches the soil below, with turf replaced once it stops draining like sod (City of Brighton). On the loam that is a base built properly. On the river ground it is the whole job.