Area Code 540 — Roanoke, Virginia

NANP area code

540

UTC−5, UTC−4 during daylight saving

State
Virginia
Primary city
Roanoke
Time zone
Eastern
In service
1995
Overlay
826

The code reaches 264 communities and 43 counties and independent cities across Virginia.

Was this call legitimate?

The area code itself carries no risk signal. 540 is assigned to Roanoke, Virginia, so a call from it is consistent with a real caller in that area — but the digits alone prove nothing, because they can be forged.

Caller ID is set by whoever places the call, not verified by the network. That is why neighbour spoofing works: an operation anywhere in the world can display a number that matches the area code — and often the first three digits after it — of the person being called, so the call looks local. Every community in the 540 territory is a plausible-looking origin for a forged 540 number, which is why one can be made to look like a neighbour to so many people. The same applies to its overlay code 826, which serves the same ground.

If you did not recognise the call: let it go to voicemail — a legitimate caller with real business will leave one. Do not return the call using the number shown; look the organisation up independently and call the number you found. Never confirm personal details, card numbers, or one-time codes to someone who called you, however plausible the number looked.

Codes.zone publishes no complaint counts, risk scores, or caller identities. We hold no data on individual numbers and will not estimate what we cannot source.

Local time and when to call back

Time there now

Eastern · UTC−5, UTC−4 during daylight saving

Reasonable callback window

8:00 AM – 9:00 PM

local time in Eastern

Federal rules bar telemarketing calls to a residence outside 8:00 AM–9:00 PM in the called party's own time zone. It is a sensible bound for a personal callback too — and a caller who rang you well outside it was not observing it.

Overlay codes and ten-digit dialling

540 does not have its territory to itself. 826 covers the same ground, serving Roanoke and the rest of the 540 territory. An overlay is what a regulator adds when a region runs out of assignable numbers: rather than splitting the area and forcing half the residents to change their number, a second code is laid over the top and new numbers are issued from it.

The practical consequence: two neighbours on the same street can hold numbers in different area codes, so the code tells you nothing about which part of town a caller is in — and local calls must be dialled as all ten digits, because seven is no longer unambiguous.

Cities served

largest 20 by ZIP count
Communities served by area code 540, ranked by how many ZIP codes each holds.
CityZIP codesCounty or independent city
Roanoke41Botetourt County
Fredericksburg9Fredericksburg city
Blacksburg4Montgomery County
Harrisonburg4Harrisonburg city
Winchester4Frederick County
Radford3Radford city
Salem3Salem city
Stafford3Stafford County
Warrenton3Fauquier County
Christiansburg2Montgomery County
Hamilton2Loudoun County
Marshall2Fauquier County
Middleburg2Loudoun County
Middletown2Frederick County
Purcellville2Loudoun County
Round Hill2Loudoun County
Spotsylvania2Spotsylvania County
Staunton2Staunton city
Strasburg2Shenandoah County
Upperville2Fauquier County

244 further communities not listed. All Virginia area codes →

Each point is a community served by 540, plotted from its record coordinates. The outline is the convex envelope of those points — a footprint, not a boundary.
  • Reference points and footprint
  • Not an official NANPA boundary
  • Not a USPS delivery area

Scope every community matched to 540. Source geoinfo-dataset (full_dataset) ZIP→NPA (2018 snapshot), GeoNames US postal codes (2026-07 postal dump) and Census 2024 county Gazetteer (2024 Gazetteer). Updated . Coordinates are place reference points, not boundaries.

Counties and independent cities

Prefixes inside 540

We do not publish the NXX prefixes inside 540. The assignment of prefixes to rate centres comes from LERG routing data, which is proprietary, and we will not estimate it from postal data — ZIP codes and telephone prefixes do not map onto each other. Awaiting a clean-rights NPA-NXX source.

Why this code exists

540 has served this territory since 1995. It eventually ran short of exchanges to hand out, and rather than split the region and make half its residents change their number, the regulator laid 826 over the same ground in 2022. New lines here are issued from the newer code, which is why a neighbour’s number may not start with 540.