253 Area Code: Tacoma, Washington

The 253 area code covers Pierce County and the surrounding southern Puget Sound region of Washington, with Tacoma as the primary city. Tacoma sits along Commencement Bay at the southern end of Puget Sound, organized around a working port (the Port of Tacoma is one of the larger container ports on the West Coast), a downtown core that has reshaped itself substantially over the past two decades, and the surrounding cluster of military, healthcare, and education employment built around Joint Base Lewis–McChord and the University of Washington Tacoma. The 253 footprint extends through Lakewood, Puyallup, Federal Way, and the surrounding Pierce County communities.

Records linked to 253 numbers in the directory often include Bellevue, Seattle, Spokane, and Vancouver — Washington cities outside the 253 footprint. The pattern reflects standard public-record dynamics, with phone numbers porting across Washington and addresses linked across multiple cities. The directory currently documents 398 distinct prefixes within 253 in detail, a working subset of the prefix population the code carries.

Tacoma's home values come in well above the US median, in line with broader Puget Sound pricing pressure that has reshaped the region's housing market over the past decade. Median household income runs close to the national reading, the city's median age sits close to the US figure, and population places Tacoma among the larger cities in Washington — substantial enough to anchor a regional economy organized around the port, the military installation, healthcare, and the broader southern Puget Sound corridor.