Phil is a real estate agent who lives in California with his family. He has been married to Claire Dunphy for seventeen years and has three children, Haley, Alex, and Luke. He sees himself as the "cool dad," though his kids rarely agree. He dotes on his wife Claire and constantly tries to find ways to bond with his three kids. He has a very juvenile attitude, and is referred to by Claire as the "kid [she's] married to." He uses a parenting method that he calls "peerenting", which is a combination of talking like a peer but acting like a parent. He is very confident in his work, once saying "I could sell a fur coat to an Eskimo." He at times shows a sort of crush-like affection for Gloria, however he says "[He] would never stray from Claire." In college he was a cheerleader at the University of Oregon and his birthday is April 3.

Phil suffers from coulrophobia, intense fear of clowns. This was revealed in the episode Fizbo, when Cameron came to Luke's birthday party dressed as a clown. He has addressed this and says that his mother thinks the fear originated from him finding a dead clown in the woods one day when he was little. His laid-back way of handling situations often gets him into chain reaction situations in which the problem grows after every event. He often has to lie to avoid getting into trouble with Claire, though she always ends up finding out in the end, often leaving Phil in embarrassment.