Jeep CJ factory paint colors and option numbers

Introduction

Jeep CJs should have an alpha-numeric “paint option number” listed on the vehicle identification plate, often referred to as the firewall tag.

The mix of available colors varied by year, and not all colors in a given year were available on CJs — the paint colors were for all Jeep makes, in other words.

This page presents factory Jeep paint colors and their corresponding paint option numbers by year.

At least one “original” source for each year

I tracked down at least one original source for each year and linked to them alongside the color options. My goal was to rely on a historical document — “to go to the source,” as my history teachers would say — instead of a secondary compilation.

There are discrepancies…

Original sources are not without their challenges. Sales catalogs, for instance, only list retail colors — therefore excluding “fleet” colors. The same “retail-only” approach goes for dealer paint cards. Also, third parties occassionally use different names, like “poly” in lieu of “metallic.” Generally speaking, I considered technical service manuals and/or year-specific service manual supplements as the “gold standard” when resolving any discrepancies.

It’s worth noting that several Jeep paint color references use color-matching/touch-up paint websites as guides. In my experience, these websites seemingly over-state the volume of color options available in a given year, at least when compared to service manuals. I’m in no way suggesting that these websites are wrong — I don’t know nearly enough to posit that — but I think it’s important to acknowledge these discrepancies.

Thanks to (now defunct?) CJ Offroad for the motivation

I’d like to thank what appears to be a now defunt website, CJ Offroad, for compiling the paint color list that motivated me to track down these original sources. CJ Offroad, in turn, credits Hayden Olenik for this foundational contribution to the classic Jeep community — thank you, Hayden.

Apologies if my attribution is wrong. There are several versions of this page floating around the internet, so please correct me if I’m mistaken!

A note on the hex color codes embedded on this page

For the visual color samples below, I relied on Paint Scratch for hex color codes. I have not independenly verified the accuracy/mapping of these hex codes to “actual” factory paint colors codes from third-party auto paint manufacturers. To my 42-year-old eyes, though, the colors seem pretty darn close.

With that said, I would not recommend relying on these samples for purposes of selecting a new color for your rig. Instead, I’d suggest entering a particular paint color or code in an image search and, then, requesting an actual paint swatch. You should be able to do this through a variety of online sources or your local vehicle paint/body shop.