The best fonts for therapist websites pair a warm, readable heading font with a plain, highly legible body font, such as Lora with Source Sans 3, or Fraunces with Inter. Set body text at 17–18px with a line-height around 1.6, keep to two fonts, and choose free Google Fonts so licensing is never a worry.
What font should a therapist use on their website?
Use two fonts at most: one for headings and one for body text. The heading font carries the personality. The body font does the hard work and should be almost invisible, so that people notice what you're saying rather than how it's set.
For most counselling and psychotherapy practices, a gentle serif for headings and a clean sans-serif for body text is the safest strong choice. The serif brings warmth and a sense of care and experience. The sans-serif keeps long paragraphs easy on a small screen. You can reverse it, or use one versatile family for everything, but that combination is the one we come back to most.
Whatever you choose, it should pass three tests:
- —Readable at 16–18px on a phone, in daylight, without zooming.
- —Clear letter shapes, so a capital I, lowercase l and number 1 don't blur together, and a and o are easy to tell apart.
- —Free to use on the web, which in practice means Google Fonts or a font you've properly licensed.
12 Google Font pairings for therapy and counselling websites
Every font below is free on Google Fonts. We've grouped them by feel rather than by fashion, because the right pairing depends on who you're trying to reach.
| Heading font | Body font | Feel | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lora | Source Sans 3 | Warm, steady, quietly literary | Counsellors and psychotherapists in solo practice |
| Fraunces | Inter | Soft, characterful, modern | Integrative and humanistic therapists who want warmth without fuss |
| Cormorant Garamond | Nunito Sans | Elegant, light, spacious | Psychotherapists and coaches with a refined, minimal brand |
| Libre Baskerville | Lato | Traditional, trustworthy | Clinical and counselling psychologists, older client groups |
| DM Serif Display | DM Sans | Confident, clean, contemporary | Group practices and clinics wanting a polished look |
| Playfair Display | Source Sans 3 | Classic with some contrast | Couples therapists and relationship counsellors |
| Newsreader | Figtree | Editorial, calm, readable | Therapists who blog or publish a lot of long-form writing |
| Spectral | Karla | Thoughtful, gentle, slightly bookish | Psychodynamic and existential practitioners |
| Merriweather | Open Sans | Sturdy, clear, no-nonsense | CBT therapists and services with a practical tone |
| Manrope | Manrope | Friendly, rounded, single family | Child, family and young people's services |
| Atkinson Hyperlegible | Atkinson Hyperlegible | Plain, highly legible | Neurodivergent-affirming practices and accessibility-first sites |
| Crimson Pro | Work Sans | Scholarly but approachable | EMDR trainers, supervisors and CPD providers |
Seeing a pairing set in real headings and paragraphs is far more useful than looking at a specimen. Our free tool lets you preview each one with therapy-style copy. Preview the font pairings for therapists →
A few notes on the pairings
- —Cormorant Garamond and Playfair Display are display faces. They look lovely large and become fragile when small, so keep them for headings of 28px and up, and never use them for body text.
- —Fraunces is a variable font with a 'soft' setting that rounds its corners. Used gently, it gives a warmth that's hard to get elsewhere.
- —Single-family pairings (Manrope, Atkinson Hyperlegible) rely on weight and size for hierarchy. Use a clearly heavier weight and a big size jump for headings, or everything looks the same.
- —If you're not sure, Lora with Source Sans 3 is very hard to get wrong.
Serif or sans-serif: which is better for a therapy website?
Neither is objectively better. The old rule that serifs are hard to read on screens dates from low-resolution monitors. Modern phones and laptops render both well.
What matters is the job each font is doing:
- —Serifs (Lora, Libre Baskerville, Fraunces) read as considered, experienced and literary. They suit headings and can work for body text if the font was designed for screens.
- —Sans-serifs (Inter, Source Sans 3, Lato) read as clear, modern and approachable. They're the default choice for body text, buttons, forms and navigation.
- —Rounded sans-serifs (Nunito Sans, Manrope) feel friendlier and younger, which suits child and family services but can feel a little light for a psychology clinic.
A useful question to ask yourself: if your practice were a room, would it be a book-lined study, a bright modern consulting room, or somewhere soft and informal? Pick the heading font that matches the room.
Which fonts are best for readability and dyslexia?
A good share of the people visiting a therapy website are reading under stress, and some will be dyslexic, have ADHD, visual impairments or a migraine. Designing for them makes the site better for everyone.
The British Dyslexia Association's style guide recommends plain sans-serif fonts, a comfortable size, generous line spacing, left-aligned text and avoiding long passages in italics or underline. In practice, for a therapy website, that means:
- —A clear sans-serif for body text. Atkinson Hyperlegible, Lexend, Inter, Source Sans 3 and Open Sans are all strong options on Google Fonts.
- —Left-aligned text, never justified. Justified text creates uneven gaps between words that make lines harder to track.
- —Bold for emphasis, not italics or underline. Keep underline for links only.
- —No long passages in capitals. Short labels are fine; whole sentences are tiring.
- —Off-white or warm backgrounds rather than pure white, which can feel glaring to some readers.
Atkinson Hyperlegible was designed by the Braille Institute specifically to make similar characters easier to tell apart. Lexend was designed around research into reading proficiency. Neither is a magic fix, and there's no single 'dyslexia font' that suits everyone, but both are sensible choices if accessibility is central to how you work.
What font size and line-height should a therapist website use?
Most therapy websites we audit have body text that's too small and too cramped. Here's what we use as a starting point:
| Element | Mobile | Desktop | Line-height |
|---|---|---|---|
| Body text | 17px | 18px | 1.6–1.7 |
| Small print, captions | 15px minimum | 15–16px | 1.5 |
| H3 subheadings | 20–22px | 22–24px | 1.3 |
| H2 section headings | 26–28px | 32–36px | 1.2 |
| H1 page title | 32–36px | 44–56px | 1.1–1.15 |
| Buttons | 16–17px | 16–18px | 1.2 |
Two other numbers matter just as much:
- —Line length: aim for roughly 60–75 characters per line on desktop. Wider than that and the eye loses its place moving back to the start of the next line.
- —Paragraph spacing: leave clear space between paragraphs, roughly the same as one line of text. WCAG 2.2 also asks that your layout still works if a visitor increases line-height to 1.5 and paragraph spacing to twice the font size, so don't build anything that breaks when text gets a little bigger.
And keep text contrast at 4.5:1 or higher against its background, which is the WCAG 2.2 AA minimum for body text. Light grey body text on white is one of the most common accessibility failures we see on therapy websites.
Fonts and colours work together. If your type is right but your text colour is too pale, the page still fails. Read: Best colours for therapist websites →
Which fonts should therapists avoid?
- —Script and handwriting fonts for anything beyond a logo or signature. Great Vibes, Dancing Script and similar fonts are hard to read and feel more wedding than therapy.
- —Very thin weights for body text. A 300-weight font that looks elegant on your designer's large monitor can disappear on a phone in daylight.
- —Heavy condensed fonts like Oswald or Bebas Neue for headings. They read as urgent, loud and salesy, which is the opposite of how you want someone to feel.
- —Novelty fonts, including Comic Sans and Papyrus. They undermine trust, fairly or not.
- —More than two families. Three or four fonts make a site feel unsettled, and every extra font slows the page down.
- —System defaults by accident. Times New Roman or Arial aren't bad fonts, but they often signal that nobody made a decision.
The best therapy websites don't have the most interesting fonts. They have the most comfortable ones. If a client notices your typeface, it's usually because it's getting in their way.
Adam Watters, Founder, Psyche Creative
Are Google Fonts free to use, and are there any GDPR issues?
Almost every font on Google Fonts is released under the SIL Open Font License, with a small number under the Apache License. Both allow free commercial use on your website, in print and in your logo, without attribution. You can't sell the font files themselves, but you'd never need to.
Fonts outside Google Fonts are different. Many 'free' fonts on download sites are free for personal use only. Commercial fonts from foundries are licensed per website, often by monthly page views. If someone has designed your logo or website in a paid font, ask for the licence in writing.
The GDPR point is worth knowing. When a website loads fonts directly from Google's servers, the visitor's IP address is sent to Google. A German court ruled in 2022 that doing this without consent breached GDPR. UK courts haven't followed suit, but the cautious and easy fix is to self-host the font files on your own site, which most modern builders and frameworks support. It's also slightly faster.
How do you choose fonts that match your therapy brand?
Start from the people you want to reach, not from what you like the look of. A few prompts help:
- —Who is your typical client, and how might they be feeling when they find you?
- —Three words you'd want someone to use about your practice. 'Calm, warm, clear' points to different fonts than 'expert, rigorous, established'.
- —How much reading your site involves. If you blog, prioritise a body font designed for long text.
- —Where else your fonts will appear: leaflets, business cards, Canva templates, email signatures. Google Fonts are available in Canva, which makes consistency easy.
Once you've decided, write it down. Font names, weights, sizes and where each one is used belong in a simple brand style guide, so your website, social posts and print all speak in the same voice.
A one-page style guide stops your fonts drifting over time. Read: How to create a therapist brand style guide →
If you'd like us to choose and set your typography properly, with accessible sizes and self-hosted fonts built in, that's part of every website we design. See our therapist web design service →
Frequently asked questions
What is the best font for a therapist website?
There's no single best font, but a gentle serif for headings and a clear sans-serif for body text works for most practices. Lora with Source Sans 3 is a reliable, free Google Font pairing that feels warm and reads well on phones.
How many fonts should a therapy website use?
Two at most: one for headings and one for body text. A single versatile family is fine too, as long as you use clear size and weight differences for hierarchy.
What font size should body text be on a therapist website?
We recommend 17px on mobile and 18px on desktop, with a line-height of about 1.6. Never go below 15px, even for small print.
Are Google Fonts free for commercial use?
Yes. Almost all Google Fonts use the SIL Open Font License or the Apache License, which allow free commercial use on websites, print and logos. Self-hosting them is the cautious choice for GDPR.
What is a good dyslexia-friendly font for a counselling website?
Clear sans-serifs such as Atkinson Hyperlegible, Lexend, Inter or Source Sans 3 are good choices. Pair them with left-aligned text, generous line spacing and an off-white background.
Adam works with UK therapy practices, EMDR trainers and mental health organisations on websites, social media and digital campaigns. He started Psyche Creative to give clinicians a marketing partner who understands the sector — and won't compromise on professional standards to get results.
