How to Write a French Address Correctly

A French address starts with the person or company and moves towards the commune. The house number sits before the street type, and the postal code is written immediately before the commune name on the last line.

The standard order

1. Recipient name or company.
2. Delivery point details inside the building, such as flat, floor, staircase or building name.
3. Number and street, written as number, street type and street name.
4. Locality or lieu-dit, if applicable.
5. Code postal and commune.
6. Country, for mail from abroad.

La Poste promotes a layout that keeps these items on separate lines, uses capital letters, and avoids punctuation on the last lines so that automatic sorting works well.

Street types

The street type is part of the name and comes first: rue, avenue, boulevard, place, chemin, impasse, allee. Words such as de la or du are kept. Abbreviations such as av. or bd are common but it is safer to write the full word in forms.

Building and flat details

Many French buildings have an entrance code and an interphone. The inside details belong on their own line above the street: for example Batiment B, Escalier 2, 3eme etage, Porte 12. Numbers can carry suffixes such as bis or ter when a plot has been divided.

Lieux-dits and rural addresses

In the countryside, houses often have a lieu-dit, a named place such as a hamlet or farm. The lieu-dit goes on its own line, after the street line and before the code postal. Some rural properties have a number and street name only in recent years, because systematic numbering of roads has been introduced progressively. A lieu-dit and a name on the mailbox may still be the best identification.

Language and characters

French addresses use accented letters. Systems that remove accents are generally accepted but spelling should match the commune name as published by the postal operator.

A formatted example

Placeholder values only:

Camille Exemple
Batiment B, Escalier 2
12 rue de l'Exemple
Lieu-dit Les Placeholders
12345 EXEMPLEVILLE
FRANCE

Using a UPCS code

A code such as FR-XXXX-XXXX (placeholder) can be added next to the address to mark the exact entrance. It does not replace the lines above. See France postal code format explained and the France overview.