FH6 Livery & Design: How to Create Custom Paint Jobs

Published: May 13, 2026 · 9 min read

The Livery Editor: An Overview

Forza Horizon 6's livery editor is honestly one of the best design tools in any racing game I've touched. It's a layer based vinyl system. You stack shapes on top of each other to build anything from a basic two tone to full race car replicas that look like they took a professional design team weeks. FH6 added some legit upgrades over FH5. Gradient tools that weren't in the last game, a snap to symmetry toggle that actually works (FH5's was buggy as hell), the layer cap got bumped to 3000 (I've hit it exactly once doing a GT3 replica), and the color picker now accepts hex codes directly. That last one alone saved me hours of eyeballing shades and getting it wrong.

I've been making liveries since FH4 and the jump from FH5 to FH6 brought more quality of life improvements than I expected, like genuinely surprising stuff that I didn't think they'd actually fix after years of the same jank. Most of what I know came from trial and error. Lots of error tbh. Actually y'know what lemme tell you about my worst one, just so you know what NOT to do. I spent 8 hours on this Martini Racing Lancia Delta replica back in FH5 and I was so proud of it, like showing my friends screenshots and everything. Then I realized I'd placed all the stripes on the wrong side of the car because symmetry mode got turned off somehow about 2 hours in and I just never noticed because I was so zoomed in on individual panels the whole time.

Eight. Hours. Gone.

And I had to redo the entire left side from scratch while my buddy was laughing at me in Discord the entire time and honestly I deserved it but it still stings when I think about it, like I genuinely get a little twinge of annoyance every time someone mentions Martini liveries even now and I cannot look at a Lancia Delta the same way anymore. That's the kind of mistake that makes you wanna uninstall for a week and question whether you should even be allowed near the livery editor ever again but somehow you come back because the results when it actually works are just too satisfying to give up on.

Anyway here's what actually matters if you wanna make stuff that doesn't look like a 5 minute rush job.

Getting Started: The Editor Interface

Right then. Let's actually get into it.

Base Paint (Do This First, Seriously)

Before you touch a single vinyl, set the base paint. I mean it, just do this first. This is the color that shows thru unpainted areas and I've forgotten to do this and had to redo entire sections bc the default color looked wrong under my decals and it made me wanna scream, like actually close the game and walk away kinda frustration. You've got a few options and they all have their place and honestly half the battle is just knowing which finish works for the vibe you're going for.

Solid colors: Single color paint, use the color wheel or paste a hex code. Simple but effective for clean builds where you don't wanna complicate things.
Two tone: Different color for upper vs lower body. The split line auto follows body lines which is a nice touch. On some cars it flows naturally and on others it looks kinda awkward. YMMV by car model, def test before committing.
Metallic: Adds flake to the paint. The intensity slider goes from subtle shimmer to full bass boat sparkle, and honestly I've spent way too much time just sliding it back and forth trying to find the exact right amount. I usually keep it around 20 to 30 percent for race replicas. Any more and it starts looking like a hot wheels car which is fine if that's what you're going for but it's not for everything, y'know, it's sorta a specific look.
Matte: Flat, zero gloss. Great for modern race car looks and certain JDM styles. Be warned tho, matte makes some vinyl shapes look weird bc the contrast between matte paint and glossy vinyls can be jarring and there's no way to fix it except changing the paint.
Pearlescent: Color shifts based on viewing angle. The dual tone pearlescent option lets you pick two colors that blend at certain angles and it looks incredible on supercars at golden hour. Kinda wasted on anything else tbh but when it works it REALLY works.
Special: Chrome, carbon fiber, two tone pearl, and Festival exclusive finishes and stuff like that. Some of these require unlocking thru the Playlist which is annoying but whatever. Chrome is... a choice. Use sparingly unless you're going for a very specific look. I've seen way too many full chrome cars and it's never as cool as people think it's gonna be, like no joke I've never seen a single full chrome car in the auction house that made me think yeah that was worth it.

Vinyls: The Building Blocks

Vinyls are individual shapes you slap onto the car's body panels, and the editor ships with hundreds of predefined shapes organized into categories. But honestly like 80 percent of everything I make uses maybe 5 shapes just stretched and layered creatively and then distorted and recolored and combined in ways the original designers probably never intended.

It's sorta ridiculous how far you can push a basic rectangle when you've got enough patience and enough time to just sit there fiddling with the scale and rotation sliders for 45 minutes straight until something clicks and suddenly a boring square becomes a perfect fender stripe.

Geometric: Circles, squares, triangles, lines, arcs, and abstract shapes, things like that. Rectangles and circles carry most of my designs tbh. The abstract shapes are super underrated and I feel like nobody talks about em. You can distort em into all kinds of useful forms that don't look anything like the original shape and honestly half the time I don't even remember what shape I started with by the time I'm done messing with it.
Sponsor Decals: Pre made logos for Mobil 1, Pennzoil, Castrol, Goodyear, and a bunch of others, sorta the usual suspects. Useful for race replicas but the selection isn't huge and some are weirdly proportioned and the scaling on a few of em is just straight up broken.
Numbers: Race number decals in various fonts. Customizable digits, good enough for most builds. Nothing fancy but they get the job done. Y'know.
Graphics: Pre built stuff like flames, tribal patterns, pinstripes, checkerboard, and whatever other designs shipped with the game. I rarely use these unless I'm doing a specific period correct build, and even then I'm like ehhh maybe not. The tribal patterns in particular have not aged well and I'm not sure who's still using them but someone must be. Probably the same people who put anime wraps on hypercars, which is fine, you do you, but it's not my thing tbh.
Letters and Numbers (Font): Full alphabet in about 8 to 10 fonts. Use these to spell out words, create custom text, build fake sponsor logos. The font selection isn't amazing but you can do a lot with the right sizing and spacing and a little patience.

Layer System Explained

Alright so layers. The thing everyone messes up.

Every vinyl you place is a layer and they stack. Highest numbered layer sits on top visually. Think of it like sheets of paper. Each new shape covers whatever's below it.

Seems obvious right?

But I've watched people fight with their layer order for 20 minutes straight, furiously deleting and readding vinyls and getting more and more tilted, before realizing they just needed to drag one layer to the top and that was the entire problem and they could've been done ages ago. Happens to everyone at least once. And then you feel like an absolute idiot for half an hour and your friends never let you forget it.

Layer Position	Visibility	Use Case
Lowest (Layer 1)	Partially or fully covered by layers above	Background shapes, base patterns, large color blocks
Middle	Partially visible between higher and lower layers	Stripe patterns, gradient transitions, secondary details
Highest	Fully visible, covers everything below	Sponsor logos, race numbers, text, final details

Layer Management Tips

Use groups: FH6's group functionality is a lifesaver. Select multiple layers, hit Group, and now they move, scale, and copy as one unit. For complex designs where you need to adjust an entire section (like all the stripes on one side or whatever) this is essential. FH5 had groups too but FH6's version is way smoother and less janky, and honestly it's one of those upgrades where you don't realize how bad the old system was until you use the new one and then you can never go back.
Name your groups: Left side stripes, Rear sponsor decals, Roof design, things like that. With 3000 layers possible, unnamed groups are a nightmare to navigate and you will absolutely lose things and then spend 20 minutes clicking thru every single layer trying to find the one stripe that's the wrong shade of orange. I learned this the hard way on a 2400 layer GT3 replica where I couldn't find anything and ended up deleting the wrong group twice and almost threw my controller at the wall. Still hurts tbh.
Duplicate strategically: Place a sponsor on the left fender, duplicate for the right fender. Use Flip Horizontal if the logo orientation matters and the text doesn't get reversed into some cursed backwards nonsense. Don't manually rebuild the same thing twice, that's the slow way and life is too short and you'll definitely introduce tiny positioning errors that'll drive you nuts later.
Merge when done: Once a group is finalized, Merge Group consolidates all its layers into one. This frees up layer count for additional detail work. Just make sure you're actually done with that section before merging bc un-merging isn't a thing and once it's merged it's merged forever and you will cry real tears if you realize you need to change something two hours later. Ask me how I know.

Color Matching with Hex Codes

Ok this one's actually important.

FH6's editor accepts hex codes directly and this is honestly huge for replicating real world colors. No more eyeballing and hoping it looks right. To use it:

Open the color picker for any vinyl or base paint.
Select the Custom Color tab.
Enter a 6 character hex code (like FF0000 for Ferrari Rosso Corsa red).
Adjust material type (gloss, matte, metallic) after setting the color, the order matters.

Common racing hex codes that live in my notes app and I'm just gonna share em here because why not: Ferrari Red (FF2800), Gulf Blue (009DE0) and Gulf Orange (FFA500), Martini Racing Blue (213E8F) and Martini Red (D52B1E), Marlboro Red (C8102E), Rothmans Blue (003399) and Rothmans Gold (C4A35A), Castrol Green (009639) and Castrol Red (ED1C24), and honestly like a dozen more that I've collected over the years from random forum posts and YouTube videos and trial and error.

These aren't necessarily official or anything but they're what I've found looks right in game after testing a bunch of variations. Some of the official brand hex codes look weird under FH6's lighting which is sorta warm and golden compared to FH5's more neutral lighting, so I tweaked em and honestly they look better now than the real thing.

Gradient and Mask Techniques

This is where it gets good.

Creating Smooth Gradients

Before FH6 making gradients was a massive pain involving stacking tons of thin rectangles with progressively shifted colors. Here's the old manual method for reference (in case you're on an older game or just hate yourself) and then the new one that actually saves your sanity.

Place 20 to 30 thin, tall rectangles across the gradient area.
Color each one slightly lighter or darker than the last, stepping from Color A to Color B.
Adjust transparency on each. Middle rectangles semi transparent, edges opaque.
Group everything and add a slight blur from FH6's vinyl settings.
Or just... use FH6's new Gradient Fill tool on a single shape. Pick two colors and it auto generates the smooth transition. Saves dozens of layers and looks better and it's like why did this take 3 games to add honestly. The old method still works but honestly there's zero reason to suffer thru it anymore unless you're going for a very specific effect or you're some kind of vinyl purist who thinks convenience is cheating, which I respect but cannot relate to.

Using Masks (Cutout Technique)

Masks let you create shapes with holes or complex outlines without burning thru hundreds of layers. It's a color to transparency trick that takes some practice to wrap your head around but once it clicks it's incredibly powerful.

Base layer: Large colored shape where you want the masked area. This is your canvas.
Mask layer: Black shape over the area you want to cut out. Pure black (0,0,0 RGB) with the Multiply blend mode acts as a cutout. It removes layers below instead of covering them which is the key thing to understand.
Inverse mask: White shapes with Multiply blend mode preserve layers below. Combine black and white masks for complex stencils that would otherwise take forever.

The masking system is how top designers pull off dragon scales, mechanical patterns, and intricate logos without hitting the 3000 layer cap and it's basically the difference between something that looks like a professional design and something that looks like someone discovered the circle tool and went nuts with it. I still mess it up when I haven't done it in a while, it's not the most intuitive thing and the documentation is nonexistent so you sorta just figure it out through trial and error and YouTube videos from people who are way better at this than me. The key insight is that Multiply blend mode plus pure black equals hole and once you internalize that the rest makes sense. Mostly.

Symmetry and Mirroring

Half the work. Literally.

Most cars are symmetrical (some have slightly offset body panels but that's rare and usually not noticeable). FH6's mirroring tools literally save half the work and if you're not using them you're making life way harder than it needs to be.

Snap to Symmetry: Turn this on from the toolbar before placing shapes. Anything you put on the left auto mirrors to the right and it's genuinely the single biggest time saver in the editor, I'm not exaggerating even a little bit. Enable it BEFORE you start, not after you've already placed 50 shapes on one side like an absolute fool and then spend the next hour trying to salvage it. Yes I've done that, more than once, and it feels worse every single time. The kind of mistake where you just stare at the screen for a minute questioning all your life choices.
Copy to opposite side: If you placed shapes before enabling symmetry (see above, we've all been there, no judgment), select em and choose Copy to Opposite Side. Mirrors position and orientation. Not pixel perfect on every car but close enough for most builds and way better than starting over, which is the only other option and that's just soul crushing after 3 hours of work.
Mirror axis: Runs thru the center of the car longitudinally. Some cars have slightly asymmetrical panels and the mirroring gets a little weird on those, like the hood vents on certain JDM cars and some rear bumpers where the body lines don't quite match up on both sides even though the car looks symmetrical at first glance. For those you might need to nudge mirrored shapes by a few pixels manually or just accept that it's close enough and nobody's gonna notice except you at 3am zoomed in at 400 percent.

Sharing and Downloading Liveries

The whole point honestly.

Sharing Your Designs

So you're finally done. Or done enough.

Once you're happy with it (or sick of looking at it, whichever comes first), share it with the community. Here's the flow.

Go to My Designs in the Creative Hub.
Select the livery you wanna share.
Hit Share Design. The game spits out a unique Share Code that other people use to find it.
Add tags. Race, replica, drift, anime, abstract, whatever fits. Tags are how people actually find your stuff in searches so don't skip this.
Optionally set a price in credits. Most popular designers charge 10k to 50k. Free gets more downloads but zero credits, so up to you and what your goals are.

Tips for Getting Downloads

Downloads. The currency of validation.

Design for popular cars: Supra RZ, GT-R, Porsche 911, RX-7, Mustang, BRZ, and a few others that always dominate the trending page. These get the most eyes and the most downloads by a huge margin and it's not even close. Same livery on a rare car gets a fraction of the downloads, like sometimes literally 1/50th of what it'd get on a Supra even if it's the exact same design. It's not fair but it's how the marketplace works and fighting it is pointless and you'll just end up frustrated with 12 downloads on a design you spent 15 hours on. Ask me how I know.
Use descriptive names: Racing Livery is basically invisible in search, nobody's gonna find it. 2023 Gulf Oil GT3 Replica or Midnight Purple Drift Build actually show up when people search. Be specific and use keywords people would actually type.
Tag everything: Use all available tag slots. Replica, Racing, Realistic, Detailed, and Competition get the most traffic based on what I've seen. Don't leave empty tag slots, you're just making your design harder to find for no reason.
Quality over quantity: One detailed livery gets more downloads than ten rushed ones combined and it's not even close and I've tested this enough times to be sure. Top designers I follow spend 5 to 20 hours on a single design and you can literally see those hours in the final result, like every tiny sponsor decal is perfectly placed and every stripe follows body lines exactly and it's the kind of quality that makes you both inspired and slightly depressed about your own work.
Post on social: Reddit r/ForzaLiveryHub, Twitter/X, Discord servers, whatever platforms you're on really. Include the Share Code in your post or people will ask for it in the comments and you'll have to reply to everyone individually and it gets old fast. Sometimes a well timed Reddit post is the difference between 50 downloads and 5000, like no joke I've had a livery sit at 200 downloads for weeks and then one decent Reddit post on a Sunday afternoon pushed it to 3000 in like 3 days.

Anyway that's the social media thing in a nutshell.

Downloading Other Players' Liveries

To grab a community livery and slap it on your car, which honestly is half the fun of the game and I probably spend more time browsing designs than actually racing at this point:

Go to Creative Hub and select Find Designs.
Search by Share Code if you have one, or by car model or tags if you're just browsing.
Preview in ForzaVista mode so you can spin around and inspect every angle before committing. Don't just look at the thumbnail and apply, that's how you end up with a livery that looks great from one angle and terrible everywhere else.
Select Apply to My Car. The livery saves to that specific car and stays there until you change it.
You can Favorite a designer to see their future uploads. I do this for a handful of creators whose style I consistently like and it saves me from having to search every time.

Tips from Top Community Designers

Stuff I wish someone told me years ago. Ngl.

Study real reference images: Open photos of the real car on a second monitor or your phone or whatever you've got handy. Match panel lines, sponsor placements, and color shades exactly. The gap between close enough and a faithful replica is all in the tiny details and I cannot stress this enough. A millimeter off on sponsor placement and the whole thing looks wrong even if you can't quite say why, like your brain just knows something is off and it ruins the entire design.
Use the measure tool: FH6 has a ruler that shows distance between two points and it's one of those tools that you don't think you need until you try it and then it becomes indispensable. Use it to make sure sponsor decals are evenly spaced on both sides of the car. Nobody wants a crooked livery and it's the kind of thing that's completely invisible while you're making it and immediately obvious to everyone who downloads it and the comments will absolutely let you know.
Work panel by panel: Design each body panel (hood, trunk, side panels, roof, bumpers) separately instead of covering the whole car at once. Cut at the panel seams bc they hide transitions naturally and make the whole thing look more professional.
Layer for depth: Good liveries have visual depth. Base color, then a pattern layer, then stripe layer, then sponsor decals, then accent lines, then a shadow or outline layer on top for pop and whatever other finishing touches make it look like you actually tried. Flat liveries look amateur no matter how clean the design is technically and I've seen some technically perfect designs that just looked lifeless because there was no depth at all.
Test in different lighting: A livery that looks gorgeous in the editor's studio lighting might look completely washed out in direct sunlight, or disappear into a muddy mess at night, or turn into some weird color you didn't intend under street lights. Preview in multiple conditions before sharing, like seriously just cycle thru a few times of day and weather types. I've scrapped designs that looked incredible in the editor but turned into a disaster on the road and it's heartbreaking but better than uploading something that looks bad and having people call you out in the comments.
Back up your designs: FH6 stores liveries in the cloud but honestly I don't trust cloud saves for anything important at this point. If you're deep into a complex project, take screenshots of your layer setup, like every few hours just screenshot the whole thing. If you accidentally delete a layer (or the game crashes, and it will, it's Forza, the crash is not a question of if but when) your screenshot is your only recovery reference and it'll save your entire project and potentially your sanity.
Start simple: Your first livery should be a two color stripe design with a few sponsor decals and maybe some basic text, nothing crazy. Get comfortable with symmetry, layer order, and color matching before attempting full race replicas or complex gradients or multi-layer masks or any of the advanced stuff that'll just frustrate you. The editor is deep and the learning curve is real and unforgiving. Respect it or you'll spend 10 hours making something you hate and never wanna touch the editor again and that would be a shame because it's honestly one of the best parts of the game.

Workflow: Replicating a Real World Livery

Here's the actual process I use when recreating something like a Gulf Oil Porsche 917K. This is basically my mental checklist every time I start a new replica and I've done enough of these now that it's pretty much automatic but I still follow these steps in order every single time because skipping steps always ends in regret.

Reference images: Find photos of the real car from every angle. Front, rear, both sides, top, and close ups of logos. More is always better and I cannot overstate how much easier this makes the whole process. I usually save 15 to 20 images to flip thru while working and having them on a second screen is ideal but even just your phone propped up next to you works fine.
Base paint: Gulf Blue (009DE0), metallic finish. Set this first so everything else sits on the right foundation. If you get this wrong nothing else will look right.
Gulf Orange stripe: Rectangles and custom shapes to trace the orange band. The stripe needs to follow the car's body lines, not just be a straight line across. Symmetry mode on obviously, unless you enjoy doing everything twice.
Sponsor decals: Gulf Oil logos (the editor includes em thankfully), then period correct stuff like Goodyear, Bosch, Shell. Placement matters a ton. Match the reference photos as closely as possible or the whole thing falls apart.
Race number: Classic font, white circle background for that vintage number plaque style. Size it proportionally, too big looks cartoonish and too small looks lost.
Detail work: Pinstripes along panel edges, mirror decals, small accent lines. This is the part that takes forever but it's also what separates good from genuinely great. Nobody will consciously notice the pinstripes but they'll feel that something's missing without em.
Final review: Side by side comparison with reference images. Adjust colors, sizes, positions. Repeat until it doesn't bother you anymore or until you genuinely cannot look at it for one more second, whichever comes first. There's always something that could be better and you gotta know when to call it done, otherwise you'll be tweaking the same stripe for the rest of your life and never actually publish anything.
Share: Name it Gulf Porsche 917K Replica, tags: Replica, Porsche, Gulf, Vintage, Racing. Then post it somewhere and hope people like it as much as you do.

And then you post it and hope. That's basically it.

But y'know. Anyway.

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