Zones and map colours: where a house or villa may stand

A detailed spatial plan (RDTR) divides a kabupaten or kota into zones and sub-zones. Each has a code, such as R-2 for housing or W for tourism, and a colour on the plan's map. The colour only helps you find the zone. What the law says is in the text of the plan and in its table of activities.

People also talk about a green zone or a yellow zone. We found no zone with those names in the national regulation or in the Bali plans we read: the plans name a zone by its code. If someone says a plot is in a green zone, ask for its code, the plan and the article.

The colours, the example and the lists below are general information, not legal advice. A zone says what the plan allows. It is not a permit: a house still needs the KKPR, PBG and SLF described on the page on building permits, and your notary/PPAT should confirm in writing what the plan says for your plot.

The map on this site uses its own colours: sage green for the protected rice fields (LSD) and clay for the indicative 100 m coastal strip. They are not zoning colours, and the map is not a zoning map.

Use it to see which kabupaten, kecamatan and desa a point lies in, whether it falls in a published LSD polygon, whether it is close to the coast, and to find the official plans of the area. It does not show zones, codes or what may be built. For that, use the official viewers below and the text of the plan.

The colours of the zone map of a detailed plan are set by Permen ATR/BPN 14/2021 (guidelines for the database and map presentation of spatial plans). It gives the colour of every zone and sub-zone in three notations: CMYK, RGB (red, green and blue, each from 0 to 255) and HSV (Pasal 14 and 16, Lampiran VII, Table VII.17). The three do not always agree: in some rows the printed CMYK values give a different colour from the RGB values (for example RTH-2, RTH-5 and THR), and in one row the printed RGB values differ from the sample cell, the CMYK and the HSV (RTH-8). This page gives RGB: the printed values, except for RTH-8, where the sample cell, the CMYK and the HSV agree on 15 245 0 and the printed RGB column reads 15 145 0, an apparent misprint.

The tables below give the zones a buyer meets most often, with the standard colour. Each swatch stands beside its code and its RGB values, so the colour is never the only way to read it. The full list has more rows, for example more kinds of park (RTH-1 to RTH-6) and the mining and conservation zones.

The pattern is simple. Housing is yellow: the denser the housing, the deeper the yellow, from R-1 (deepest) to R-5 (palest). Trade and services are reds and pinks (K-1 to K-3), tourism is a light magenta pink (W), public facilities are purples (SPU), the farming zones are yellow-greens, and water, parks and protected areas are mostly blues and greens.

The standard is for the people who draw the plans, and the plans we looked at do not reproduce it exactly. In the Kuta Selatan plan (Perbup Badung 59/2021) housing is yellow, trade and services are pinks and reds, tourism is pale pink and public facilities are purples and magentas, as in the standard. The shades differ: R-2 is a paler yellow than the standard 255 220 0, and K-1 is a lighter red than 255 100 100.

The list of zones differs too. The Kuta Selatan plan has no P-1 sub-zone for food crops. The Kuta Utara plan (Perbup Badung 9/2021) has P-1 and splits tourism into W-1 and W-2. Read the code and the legend of the plan in front of you, not the colour alone.

Overlays are drawn over the zone colour as dots, lines or hatching, so a plot can show two things at once: read the legend for both. We did not compare the legends of the online viewers with the standard.

Each plan has a table of activities and land uses, often called the ITBX matrix. Its rows are activities, named by KBLI code (the ATR/BPN guidance asks for at least three digits). Its columns are the zones and sub-zones. Each cell holds a letter.

I means the activity is allowed. T means allowed with a limit that can be measured, for example on the share of the plot that may be built on. B means allowed on a specific condition. The ATR/BPN guidance says such a condition is in principle not one that depends on another agency, party or sector. Each plan names its own, for example, in the Kuta Selatan plan, an environmental document. X means not allowed.

Plans add numbers. In the Kuta Selatan plan, T1 limits operating hours, T2 limits the intensity of use (paved area, KDB, KLB, KDH), T3 limits the number of buildings or the built share of a block, B1 requires an environmental document and B2 requires the technical approval of the office concerned or facilities for waste water and rubbish. Another kabupaten may number them differently: the key printed with the table says what each means.

To read a cell: first find the zone code of the plot. Then find the row of the activity: a house to live in is rumah tinggal tunggal (KBLI 41011), a villa is KBLI 55193 and a pondok wisata 55130 in the 2020 numbering that plan uses, while OSS now applies KBLI 2025 (see the page on renting a villa to guests). Read the letter. For T and B, read the annex with the detail. Then read the plan's rules on intensity and buildings (KDB, KLB, KDH, height, GSB). The table says what the plan allows, the KKPR confirms it for the plot, and PBG and SLF follow.

The answer for a plot is in the plan's own table, zone by zone. In the Kuta Selatan plan a house to live in is allowed in the housing zones R-2 to R-4. It is allowed with a limit on the intensity of use (T2) in the tourism, trade, mixed, public-facility and office zones. It is not allowed in local protection (PS), in parks and cemeteries, in the conservation and mangrove zones, and in the water, road and power zones.

In the same plan a villa (KBLI 55193) is allowed in the tourism zone W, in trade and services K-1 to K-3 and in the mixed zone C-2. It is not allowed in the housing zones, the public-facility and office zones or any protected zone. A pondok wisata (55130) is allowed in those zones and in SPU-1 to SPU-3, and, with limits and an environmental document (T2, T3, B1), in the housing zones. A house you let to tourists is a different activity from a house you live in: the page on renting a villa to guests explains which KBLI activity applies.

A zone code does not override the farmland rules: land designated LP2B and rice fields on the LSD map are protected from conversion (see the glossary entries and the farmland section of Bali's own rules). In the Kuta Selatan plan the only farming sub-zone in the table is horticulture (P-2). There the T2 limit on a house or a villa is at most 10 percent paving and at least 70 percent green area (Lampiran V.a.2), and B1 asks for an environmental document.

Setbacks and protected strips apply on top of the zone. The coastal setback is at least 100 m from the highest tide towards land (see sempadan pantai and sempadan sungai in the glossary), and Bali has height limits and temple zones of its own (Bali's own rules). The plan draws them as overlays, and a plot inside one may not be buildable at all, whatever the colour of its zone.

Ask the kabupaten office or your notary/PPAT for: the zone code and name, the plan and the article, whether the plan is integrated into OSS, and the row of the table for what you plan, with its letter and the annex for any T or B. For a house or a villa the KKPR is the confirmation, and the page on building permits gives the forms and the times.

Plans are revised and replaced. Make sure the text you read is the one in force, and that the colours you saw belong to that plan and not to an older sheet.

We read the national standard, the ATR/BPN technical guidance and two Bali plans: the Kuta Selatan plan in full, and the Kuta Utara plan only for its list of sub-zones. We did not read the tables of activities of the other kabupaten, so the example is not a rule for them.

The colours are those of the standard. A plan or a viewer may use other shades, and we did not test the online viewers on a real plot.