Corrosion inhibition is a critical strategy in the industry to mitigate the detrimental effects of corrosion. Green inhibitors are a concern and are encouraged to apply in various ways. Triethanolamine lauryl sulfate (TLS) investigates as a green corrosion inhibition for carbon steel in 1 M HCl using weight loss and electrochemical measurements. A weight loss study revealed that 100 μM of TLS had the highest inhibition effectiveness of 95.7 %. Tafel estimations from the polarization profiles showed that 100 μM had an optimal inhibition effectiveness of about 96.3 %. The physical adsorption of TLS on the carbon steel surface, which followed the Langmuir adsorption isotherm, was ascribed to the inhibitive effect. The results declare that TLS functioned as an inhibitor of mixed types. For TLS, the adsorption Gibb's free energy is −19.6 kJ mol−1, indicating spontaneous and physisorption-based. The energy gap of TLS is evaluated theoretically using density functional theory (DFT), and a lower value indicates its great donation ability of electron’s to the carbon steel. The mechanism of adsorption of TLS onto the metal surfaces is illustrated in terms of experimental and theoretical calculations.