818 Area Code: Los Angeles, California

The 818 area code covers the San Fernando Valley, the broad bowl north of the Santa Monica Mountains that makes up a substantial share of the city of Los Angeles. The 818 designation has been associated with the Valley since it was carved out of the original Los Angeles numbering, and the footprint includes Burbank, Glendale, North Hollywood, Van Nuys, Sherman Oaks, and the surrounding cities and city neighborhoods that grew up through the postwar decades — a residential and entertainment-industry corridor with several major studios and a heavy concentration of post-production and aerospace work.

Other California cities — Anaheim, Bakersfield, Chico, Concord, and many more — turn up in the directory's records tied to 818 numbers. None of those are inside the 818 footprint. The pattern reflects California's high number mobility through porting, prior registration, and the public-record sources that cross-link addresses across cities. The directory currently tracks 713 distinct prefixes within 818 in detail, a working subset of the prefixes actually allocated to the code.

Los Angeles's housing market shapes the broader demographic profile of the 818 footprint. Typical home values run several times the US median, household income sits above the national figure, the city's population is among the largest of any US municipality, and median age is several years younger than the country at large. The Valley itself is among the most populous portions of the city, with a built-up density that lies between the urban core and the more suburban patterns further out.