Refresh Your Site’s Look with Free Fonts

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We recently explored five design tweaks to help you build a stronger visual brand. Another way to change the look of your site is to display a different font (the style of your site’s text). Every site on WordPress.com comes with free Google fonts — you don’t need an upgrade. Let’s take a peek at what you can do in the Fonts panel of your Customizer.

Fonts have personalities

For a deeper dive into fonts, read our resources on font choices and font pairing.

Every theme is different, with its own layout, color palette, and fonts. Regardless of your plan, you can change your theme’s default fonts and choose from over 30 free Google fonts, including Libre Baskerville, Lobster Two, Abril Fatface, and more.

Fonts have their own personalities: they can be script-like and elegant, minimal and serious, curvy and sophisticated, bubbly and playful. Switching your theme’s default font can change the mood and vibe of your site — sometimes dramatically.

Amanda Wynn, the blogger at a word is elegy to what it signifies, is interested in sewing machines, vintage fashion, and the philosophy of history. She sets a soft, romantic tone on her site by changing the Libre 2 theme’s heading font to Tangerine, a typeface inspired by the calligraphy of the 16th and 17th centuries. You can see Tangerine in action in Amanda’s site title and post titles. She pairs this display font with Quattrocento Sans, a classic and readable font that works well for her main body text.

Similarly, travel and wellness blogger Katie Lofblad transforms the Rosalie theme by swapping in Playfair Display — a typeface inspired by letterforms and 18th-century printing technology — for her heading font. The font is large and bold but not overpowering, and she pairs it with Noto Serif, which is used for her main body text.

Experiment with a free font

With the custom CSS upgrade, included in the WordPress.com Premium and Business plans, you have access to more fonts and advanced customization options.

Want to test a new font on your site? Go to My Sites → Customize → Fonts. If you’re currently displaying your theme’s default fonts, you’ll see something like this:

In this Fonts panel, you can select fonts for your Headings and Base Font. Headings include your site title, post and page titles, widget titles, comment headers, and headlines inside posts and pages. The base font is for your site’s main body text, as well as the text for menu items.

Click the arrows next to these options to browse the dropdown list of fonts you can use for each. Each time you change a font, the live preview on the right will refresh so you can see how the font looks on your site. To refine your look, use the buttons below the font names to tweak the font style (bold, italic, bold italic, etc.) and font size (tiny, small, large, etc.).

When you’re happy with your site, be sure to Publish these changes. You can always reset your fonts to the theme’s default ones by visiting this panel and selecting the X next to the current font.

Do you learn better with video? Here’s a short tutorial:

Want more options? The WordPress.com Premium and WordPress.com Business plans include additional fonts from Typekit, allow custom CSS, and more.

Upgrade today

49 Comments

  1. What I’d find useful would be the ability to change fonts for selected words WITHIN a post, rather than for the the theme’s base font. But other than bold, italic, or underline, you can’t select specific text and use a different font for it. Any chance that might be in the cards?

    Liked by 22 people

      1. I appreciate the response, but it seems simple enough to put in a font drop-down box (like on Microsoft Word) where someone can highlight a word or phrase and choose a different font to use for that word or phrase.

        As for people who go overboard with different fonts, that’s their problem if they want their posts to be a mess. Why limit those of us who know not to go nuts with that feature?

        Liked by 14 people

      2. I don’t have the technical expertise to answer your question, though I think adding a feature like a font dropdown menu involves more development behind the scenes — like changes to the user interface, and then applying those changes to each WordPress.com theme (we currently have hundreds).

        Feel free to add your request/suggestion to the Ideas Forum (https://wordpress.com/forums/forum/ideas) — staff and volunteers comb through this on a regular basis. Thanks for the suggestions!

        Liked by 11 people

  4. Thank you! I’ve been blogging for four years almost, this is the first time I’ve been able to make a change to my text in anyway other than those weird ‘heading’ or ‘paragraph’ in the main toolbar. One thing though, I could not find a way to go back and reformat old posts. Is there a way and I’m just too blind to see it, or is it a case of once done, you can never go back?

    Liked by 14 people

    1. I could not find a way to go back and reformat old posts.

      I’m not sure if this is what you mean, but you can edit your previous posts (My Site → Blog Posts → clicking on the three dots → Edit). That includes editing the text, but also any formatting you had done with the toolbar.

      Does that answer your question, or did you mean something different when you said “reformat old posts”?

      Liked by 12 people

    1. I’m using the theme Twenty Ten and I can’t find “fonts” as an option to click on. Is my theme too old to add other fonts? Thank you for your help.

      Liked by 10 people

  13. Great information. I’m fairly new to blogging and am looking for any tips that I can get. I can also see how experimenting with your fonts can give your site a much different feel. What are some of the best fonts to work with in your opinion?

    Liked by 9 people

    1. What are some of the best fonts to work with in your opinion?

      A challenging question to answer, as it really depends on your style. But one general piece of advice is keeping the main body text readable (simple and not-distracting, and the right size — you don’t want your reader to squint, but you also don’t want to make the size too big).

      I mentioned these resources in the post, which are helpful primers:

      https://wordpress.com/dailypost/2015/09/24/principles-of-design-font-choices/
      https://wordpress.com/dailypost/2016/11/17/font-pairing/

      These resources are also helpful:

      https://www.canva.com/learn/the-ultimate-guide-to-font-pairing/
      https://fontpair.co/

      Liked by 8 people

    1. Growing your followers takes more than simply picking a theme — there are no themes that are better at building your readership than others. If you’d like to grow your readership and traffic, consider these resources:

      A free ebook on growing your traffic and building your blog: https://wordpress.com/dailypost/postaday/ebook-grow-traffic/ (There are three common formats there that you can download.)

      A free email course in which we send you daily emails for 10 days on the topics of branding and growth: https://wordpress.com/dailypost/blogging-university/#branding-growth

      A list of previous posts on The Daily Post that covers traffic, growth, finding your audience, social media, and more: https://wordpress.com/dailypost/category/traffic-growth/

      In terms of the most user-friendly themes, I personally like clean, minimal blogging themes that work well out of the box and don’t require much customization to get started — like Libre 2, Independent Publisher 2, Ryu.

      However, it really depends on your needs, preferences, and overall style — I’d browse the themes and view their demo sites to find one that looks right for you.

      Liked by 7 people

  18. Thank you but I know very well configure my themes because I have them almost all tried.
    My fonts for “the moment”, are enough for me: I do not need a supplemetary explanation, I thank you.
    I will come to the blogs to give me ideas or confirm that I chose the fonts that were needed.
    In any case l am visually impaired; I favor the visible and readable aspect, rather than the refinement.
    I love the font, you talk about it, very nicely.

    What I will need though is a functional theme with colors and customizable.
    I am obligated to put some color filters for read.
    There is none which satisfies me fully.
    P.S
    You could have subscribed to our blog and look at my articles, I find it pretty inelegant.
    Vanina Lys

    Liked by 10 people

  19. Thank you very much. I think the way we use our fonts tell a lot about our personality and the way we blog. I use Dara theme and it gives an option to change the fonts in various ways. We can also use bold or italic fonts as per our liking.
    Thanks again for this insightful read.

    Liked by 10 people

  24. I love how easy wordpress have made it to play around and experiment with fonts!
    Inspired by this post I’ve just changed from ‘Futura PT, Light and Large’ for headings and ‘PT Sans, normal’ for my base font to ‘Museo Slab, Light and Large’ for headings and ‘Museo Sans, normal’ for my base font! Always feels nice to freshen things up a little every now and then!

    Liked by 9 people

    1. As I mentioned to another reader, this is a hard question to answer, as a “good-looking font” really depends on your style and preference. Personally, I like Libre Baskerville, Gentium Book Basic, Open Sans for body text and in the past have liked Raleway and Oswald for headings. But I tend to stick with the default fonts on the themes I choose. One general piece of advice is keeping the main body text readable (simple and not-distracting, and the right size — you don’t want your reader to squint, but you also don’t want to make the size too big).

      I mentioned these resources in the post, which are helpful primers:

      https://wordpress.com/dailypost/2015/09/24/principles-of-design-font-choices/
      https://wordpress.com/dailypost/2016/11/17/font-pairing/

      These resources are also helpful:

      https://www.canva.com/learn/the-ultimate-guide-to-font-pairing/
      https://fontpair.co/

      Liked by 6 people

    1. Agree — it’s worth clarifying that “basic fonts” aren’t always boring, though — oftentimes, a basic, clean, and minimal font (especially for your main body text) is exactly what you need (and the easiest for readers to read).

      Liked by 5 people

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