How to Find Your Car's Interior Color Code

You'll need this code to match replacement parts inside your car.

Murilee Martin | 

Jan 3, 2024 | 3 min read

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When your car's interior gets torn up, stained, or just worn out, you have a variety of options for getting replacement components. Generally speaking, both original manufacturers and aftermarket companies offer replacement items including molded carpet kits, fitted headliners, door panels, seat upholstery kits, and interior trim components. Often there are parts available for cars going back to some of the earliest models, depending on your vehicle's age and how in-demand the parts are.

Ideally, the colors of your new interior components will match what's already there. In order to make that happen, though, you may have to do a bit of detective work to determine exactly what those colors are and how they're coded by the manufacturer.

Identifying the interior color codes for your vehicle can be useful for brand-new vehicles, too. For example, you might want a new set of floor mats or have to replace a removable headrest.

An Interior Color Code Specifies What the Factory Installed in Your Car

Most vehicle manufacturers offer multiple exterior and interior color choices, even on their most affordable cars. For decades manufacturers have used identifying codes, in part so their employees can know at a glance which colors were used on a particular vehicle. Nearly every mass-produced car has had those codes printed on a label of some sort inside the car or included in its original paperwork.

Interior color codes, often known as trim codes, vary by manufacturer and can change over time within a company. This means you'll need the specific code for your car's model and year when obtaining interior components.

The interior color code likely will be different from the name the automaker gives the vehicle's upholstery and trim hue. For instance, the 2024 Chevrolet Malibu's Jet Black cloth interior code is H1T, while its Dark Atmosphere/Medium Ash Gray combination is H1H.

The Interior Color Code Can Be Located in One of Several Places

If your car was built in the last few decades, the manufacturer's name for the interior color and/or the color code may be printed somewhere on its Monroney window sticker. If you still have the window sticker, the code you need could be at hand.

If you can't find that sticker, though, don't worry. Somewhere on your vehicle there is likely to be a permanent plate, tag, or decal that contains the correct interior color code or trim code. The location of this information will vary by manufacturer and era, so an online search including your vehicle's year, make, and model plus some combination of "interior color code location" or "interior trim code location" could lead you to the correct information.

The most common location will be on the manufacturer's build tag, most often located on the driver's door near the latch mechanism or on the jamb area. Other spots to check include the inside of the glove compartment, the underside of the hood, the vehicle identification number (VIN) label visible through the windshield on the driver's side of the dash top, and the passenger-side sun visor.

You May Still Need to Do Some Deciphering

Once you have found the location of the interior color code on your car, further online searching should enable you to determine which number on the label or tag is the color code you're after. Be aware that some manufacturers encode color information within the VIN. If that is the case with your car, you can search an online VIN decoding site for your vehicle, plug in the VIN, and extract the interior color code.

When in doubt, a dealership's parts department should be able to decode the VIN to provide you with the color code.

Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a Colorado-based writer who appreciates Broughams d'Elegance, kei cars, Warsaw Pact hoopties, and the Simca Esplanada.