Best fonts for email: Usage tips and tricks

One of the most striking concerns in the email production process is choosing the right font. Weight, height, width, color, shape, spacing… Does everything matter? Yes, it does, but also one of the most crucial things is to choose legible typography.

In this post, we're going to show you how to choose the best professional font for email.

HTML email fonts: General rules to follow

There are three ground rules to keep in mind when choosing the best fonts for email:

1. Never use more than two fonts in emails

If you use too many fonts, your email seems very complicated in the best case and annoying in the worst one. Choose only a font or two for one email. In a perfect case, that’s enough to use only one perfect typography but different sizes: one to highlight the heading and another one for the rest of your content.

2. Avoid using more than two font styles in emails

Do not mix regular, bold, and italic font styles in emails. If you use more than two, emails look somewhat messy. Normally, one font style is right enough. If you want to highlight things, you may apply the bold typography style. But if you need to implement the third font, make it situational.

But never underline your text and never apply italic typeface out of email accessibility reasons. 

3. Pay close attention to the legibility of the chosen font

The main feature of your content’s font is legibility. Legibility is the ability to distinguish one letter from another. Of course, legible body text is better and faster to read, so check if all character spacing is visible, clear, and distinctive enough.

What is the most readable typography? The experiment about font legibility was conducted by Norbert Schwarz and Hyunjin Song in 2010. The results were impressive. You spend almost twice as much time reading italic font styles and decorative fonts compared to regular ones:

Speaking of legibility... There are two major types: Serif and Sans Serif font. Let's see which font to use for email newsletters.

Which one to choose: a Serif or a Sans Serif font?

Typefaces do affect the legibility of other fonts for email, too. What’s the difference between them?

Serif fonts could be defined as fonts that have a small line at the end of every character. The most popular serif fonts are Times New Roman and Georgia.

Sans serif fonts are those that don’t have a decorative line at the end of every symbol. The most popular sans-serif safe fonts are Arial, Trebuchet MS, and Helvetica.

During the investigation, I have found several sources which claimed that serif fonts are most suitable for emails, but I totally disagree. Based on the assumption that emails are being observed only online using desktop or mobile screens, the best are sans serif fonts. It’s easier to read sans-serif characters on the screen.

Email safe fonts

Here is the list of the top 10 fonts that you may use with a 100% guarantee that they will render in users’ inboxes just like you planned:

1. Arial email font

This font, designed back in 1982, is packaged with all versions of Microsoft, starting from Windows 3 and Apple Mac OS X. Displayed by all email clients. Due to terminal diagonal cuts, it looks less mechanical compared to other sans serifs.

2. Helvetica email font

A sans-serif typeface, one of the most used fonts of type, has rounded letters and wide capitals. Designed in 1957.

3. Times New Roman email font

This perfect font has tall low-case letters, slightly condensed, short descenders and ascenders. Commissioned by “The Times” in 1931. This is one of the favorite fonts from the sans serifs font families of many internet users and web designers.

4. Verdana email font

It was designed to be readable on low-resolution screens. Its main feature is tall and wide low-case characters.

5. Courier/Courier New email font

Courier was designed in 1955 and adjusted to be a monospaced font. Courier New has heavier dots and commas than the original Courier. Courier is the standard modern font used for screenwriting in the film industry.

6. Tahoma email font

It is similar to Verdana yet has narrower letters, small counters, and tight letter spacing. Used as the default screen font for Windows 95, 2000, and XP versions.

7. Georgia email font

It has tall lower-case strokers that are thicker than average ones, its numerals blend seamlessly with the text due to its similar size.

8. Palatino email font

This perfect font was originally designed for headings, advertisements, and printing. Wider than other old-style serif fonts and perfectly suits logo design.

9. Trebuchet MS email font

Has shortened tails for some letters; in bold, its letters are pointy rather than rounded, and rounded dots in uppercase and lowercase letters. Released in 1996.

10. Geneva email font

This is a redesigned version of Helvetica. Its main distinction is that it has a basic set of ligatures.

These fonts are said to be the most readable modern font and one of the best modern fonts to use in email design.

Where to download web-safe fonts?

The great thing about the secure web-safe font is that you don't have to worry about downloading them. They are already supported by every visitor's operating system, so you just need to code them with CSS.

In addition, Stripo supports many secure web fonts and allows you to additionally download other fonts for your emails.

Custom fonts in emails

There are cases when you want or need to use a custom font for your emails either to stay brand consistent or to make your emails look more festive for a special occasion.

We want to remind you that you can upload custom typefaces to your Stripo to get just what you need in terms of unique typefaces for your email campaigns.

We strongly recommend that you preview these emails across multiple environments. You can do it with our embedded testing tool.

Important to note:

If an email client does not support a certain font, the latter will be replaced with a default one.  

Here is the list of popular typefaces for email clients:

• iCloud Mail uses Helvetica as a default font;

• Gmail adopts Arial font;

• Microsoft Outlook of the oldest versions, often uses Calibri font;

Size of the email fonts

There is no such thing as the best size for email fonts, as quite often, different fonts have different symbol heights. As a result, the same, say, 16px font will be different due to the chosen font family.

I have made an email template with Stripo, which allows comparing different free fonts of the same size. Please, see the results:

You choose the one you like and use it across all emails so that your newsletters are always legible and brand consistent.

We recommend that you set serif fonts and their sizes when only starting designing your email template — the settings will be applied to the entire email. This will save you a large amount of time as it will prevent you from the necessity to set fonts for every part of your emails.

Did you know that Stripo allows setting different font sizes for mobile and desktop devices? For instance, you use 14px for emails opened on desktops and 16 pixels for mobile devices.

Setting font size for desktops

• enter the Appearance tab;

• go to the General Settings section;

• pick a necessary font from the dropdown menu. The custom fonts that you have previously added to your Stripo profile will also appear on this list;

• set line spacing;

• in the Stripes section, you set a different size for every part of your email (excluding banners) and font color;

• in the Headings section, you need to pick a font once again — it may be a new one. Here you also set the size for Headings 1, 2, and 3;

• in the Button section, please set the button font color and its size.

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Setting font size for mobiles

• enter the Appearance tab;

• go to the Mobile Formatting section;

• set font size for headings, footers, content areas, menu tabs, and buttons.

Line spacing for email fonts

Line spacing is the vertical distance between lines. It is measured as the percentage of the size. 

You can set the desired spacing for your emails just in the tabs and sections where you've just set your sizes.

Some sources claim that 150% is the best line spacing size. 

But according to Email accessibility guidelines, it varies between 150% and 200%.

(email copy with single-line spacing)

(email copy with 1.6-line spacing)

Links in email fonts

Don’t use a different font to draw readers’ attention to links. Don’t ever put links without text. The text should explain where this link leads to and be organically a part of the text. Don’t use the words “here” or “link” as text. They are too short and too general to be click-worthy.

One of the best practices here is to make links of the same color as a logo. It looks great, check it out:

(Source: Email from Epilepsy Foundation)

You can also underline links for your emails if you find it necessary or if it matches your email design.

However, we strongly recommend that you never underline links for the sake of email accessibility — it distracts dyslectics.

Email fonts for buttons in emails

Buttons are the same links, but they have a more interactive form for users and are perfectly fit for adding a personal touch. If you provide a link that will take readers to a blog post, you can make it a text link,  but if you provide a link to try out the product you have, just use buttons.

There is no certain rule about the color for buttons that should be used, but it’s better to rely on color psychology and try not to ruin the graphic design concept with too loud color reproduction.

The same applies to serif fonts for the buttons: No certain rules. You just need to make sure the button texts are legible enough. Experiment with fonts and various stylistic alternates.

The text’s color is supposed to match the button’s color, and make sure that it is visible enough for reading. Check also if the text is located properly inside the button. It shouldn’t cross the button’s borders. 

Here is an example where the button looks cool:

(Source: Stripo email template)

Important to note:

You may add white spacing in buttons with Stripo so that there's some space between the text and the button borders. It makes them more legible.

So how do you do it? Work on “internal padding" in the Button tab.

You can also set a different font size for email buttons for the mobile view.

To do so, you need to:

• go to the Appearance tab;

• go to the Mobile Formatting tab;

• set button text size — to make your button text legible on mobile devices. 16px or higher is the best size here;

• toggle the “Full-width buttons” button to make your buttons wider on mobile devices; the chances customers will notice full-width buttons are too high.

Email fonts text over banners

Here is the chance to use a festive, decorative, or handwritten font that you shouldn’t actually use as the main text font.

Since the text over a banner is part of an image, it will remain the same across all email clients. And it is expected to be festive enough. So you may choose any.  

Please be advised that it’s better to choose a legible font. And that you don’t have to write too much text on a banner. If something is hard to read, try various stylistic alternates and different fonts.

Which one to use depends on your inspiration and desired email design project.

Using decorative fonts over email banners with Stripo

• when your banner image is uploaded and edited, you click the "Text" icon above the template to start working on button copy;

• enter your copy in the "Caption" section on your banners;

• then highlight your banner text and pick a desired banner font from the dropdown list.

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Email font color

There are only 2 rules you should follow here:

1. Keep the number of colors to a minimum

You should only use the colors that are present in your brand identity. If you have an idea to use more than 3 colors in your email, just leave this idea aside because it will make text illegible and your email messy. 

If you want to highlight one sentence or a phrase, just use a bold font. Using a different color is ambiguous.

Example of a good color combination in emails.

(Source: Email from Victoria's Secret)

2. Use contrast colors

If you intend to use bright colors, use contrast colors. Don’t place red text over green buttons, don’t use white over grey. It may seem festive enough for people who have good eyesight. However, color-blind people may not find our text legible.

Commonly for email content, designers use black or dark grey colors. It’s better for readability. The only exception is when you have a black background. In this case, use a white font. Don’t use a light grey font on a white background because it makes it hard to read your emails.

HTML tags for text formatting

Those email marketers who prefer email builders can format texts right in the builder. 

Those who prefer coding emails from scratch might need the following:

• to make your text bold:

<strong> text here </strong> or <b> text here </b>

• for bullet lists:

<ul>

    <li> point 1 </li>

    <li> point 2 </li>

    <li> point 3 </li>

</ul>

• to make your text Italic:

<i> text here </i> or <em> text here <em>

• to use the same font  of smaller size:

<small> text here </small>

• to highlight the text with yellow (by default) filling:

<mark> text here </mark>

• and this one allows you to define a paragraph:

<p> text here </p>

Right to Left texts in emails

Over 550 million people speak the languages that use the Right-to-Left inscription. RTL text is way more than just reversing words.

For instance, you are not supposed to reverse numbers, foreign words, etc. All punctuation marks that you'd normally put at the end of the line will actually start it.

We will not dive into details here. But you can familiarize yourself with all the RTL text guidelines in our "Right to Left text" blog post. 

We also show there how to activate the RTL option with Stripo, so you can use RTL scripts in your emails without coding skills.

Accessibility guidelines for email fonts

In a nutshell, we should consider these guidelines for several reasons:

• to enable color-blind people to read our emails and implement needed colors to your email design project;

• to enable people with visual impairments to listen to our emails with screen readers;

• to enable our users who are extremely busy and check their emails while driving or cooking and ask Siri to “read” their incoming messages, to listen to our emails;

• to enable dyslectics to read our emails — as many of the people who suffer from dyslexia are not aware of it, but reading unadapted texts is quite unbearable to them;

• keep your email design to a maximum of two sans serif fonts.

So, the guidelines to make your email text accessible:

1. Consider color contrast.

2. Make your texts left-aligned for easier perception of email copy by dyslectics — avoid center-aligned texts.

3. Always add punctuation marks at the end of every bullet point. Yes, it may be against grammar rules, but by doing this, we make our emails more legible and make at least one recipient happier.

4. Keep font size 14 pixels or more.

5. Do not underline texts.

6. Avoid Italic. If you need to highlight any part of your text, use only bold type!

7. Do not use all caps!

8. Consider legible fonts for your emails.

9. Use not more than two fonts.

10. Combine different fonts with thick and thin strokes.

For more information, please refer to our "Email accessibility" blog post.

What is the best font to use for email newsletters?

There's no such thing as the best font for Gmail, the best font for Outlook, and any other email client. It does depend on the language you're speaking. As a result, we dare to say that preferences vary from country to country due to language features.

Due to many experiments made by the eSputnik marketing team, the best fonts for emails for Russian-speaking countries are Arial and Tahoma. Arial is the most compelling sans serif font among those who set up email marketing campaigns in Russian. Tahoma looks great in both content-heavy emails and small texts. 

Helvetica is one of the most popular fonts in English-speaking countries. Arial takes 2nd place. 

To choose the most legible sans serif font, in your opinion, according to your alphabet features, you may test all the sans serif fonts as we did.

Besides that, you can also ask your friends and colleagues for advice to help you with this test.

I have created an email template with Stripo editor with the same text and the same size of 18px for each serif font. 

So, here are the results. Just compare these sans serif fonts and choose the one that fits your needs the most:

How to choose the most readable font for your newsletter?

In addition to the visual beauty of the font in the email, you should also consider the text's readability. Your email may be a piece of art, but it won't have any impact if it's hard to read. Therefore, you should choose the most readable font, such as Times New Roman, Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, Calibri, Verdana, or Lucida Sans (Lucida Grande on Mac devices).

Wrapping up

Considering all the above, we can say there are no professional-looking email fonts that are legible and look nice across all kinds of devices. You always have to choose between these sans serif fonts:

• Georgia and Times New Roman are too narrow;

• Courier New is wide but maybe even too wide for email;

• Arial is lighter than Helvetica;

• it’s impossible to tell apart Verdana and Tahoma fonts.

Apart from choosing the right email font, we need to make our emails accessible by sticking to the guidelines mentioned above.