Canva for therapists works best when you set it up once: a brand kit with your logo, three to five colours and two fonts, plus a small set of reusable templates for quotes, tips, carousels and stories. Use readable fonts such as Lora, Playfair Display, Montserrat or Open Sans, check text contrast, and export PNG for social and PDF Print with bleed for printing.
Is Canva good enough for a therapy practice?
Yes, for most day-to-day design. Canva is more than capable of producing social posts, stories, carousels, leaflets, simple flyers, workshop slides and banners that look professional. Where it struggles is in creating a distinctive brand from scratch — logos built from Canva elements can't be trademarked under Canva's licence terms, and templates used unchanged make your practice look like hundreds of others. A sensible split is: get the core identity (logo, palette, fonts) designed properly once, then use Canva to apply it week to week.
How do I set up a Canva brand kit as a therapist?
The Brand Kit lives under 'Brand' in the left-hand menu. At the time of writing (October 2026) the full Brand Kit is a paid feature on Canva Pro and Teams, with more limited options on free accounts. If you're on the free plan, keep a 'Brand' design in your account with your colours, fonts and logo on it and copy from there.
1. Logos
Upload your logo in three versions: full colour on a transparent background (PNG or SVG), a white version for dark backgrounds, and a simple icon or monogram for small spaces like profile pictures.
2. Colours
Add three to five colours with their exact hex codes and name the palette. A typical calm therapy palette might look like this:
| Role | Example colour | Hex | Use it for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary | Deep forest green | #1E3A2F | Headings, buttons, key shapes |
| Secondary | Soft sage | #8FA89A | Backgrounds, dividers, accents |
| Background | Warm off-white | #F6F3EE | Most post backgrounds |
| Text | Soft charcoal | #2B2B2B | Body text on light backgrounds |
| Accent | Muted clay | #B5654A | Small highlights, one element per design |
If you haven't settled on a palette yet, start with one of ours — each comes with hex codes and contrast checks. Browse 12 therapist colour palettes →
3. Fonts
Set a heading font, a subheading font and a body font. In Canva's Brand Kit you can assign these as text styles, so clicking 'Heading' always gives you the right font, weight and size. Two typefaces is enough; three is the absolute maximum.
4. Photos and graphics
Add a folder of your own photography — your room, your building, your headshots, calm detail shots — plus any icons or illustrations you use regularly. Your own images will always do more for trust than stock photos of strangers.
5. Brand voice and controls
If you work with a virtual assistant or colleagues, use Teams permissions so others can edit templates but not change the brand kit. Add a short note in the kit describing your tone: 'Warm, plain English, no exclamation marks, no clinical jargon.'
What are the best Canva fonts for therapists?
The best Canva fonts for therapists are readable first and characterful second. All of the fonts below are available in Canva at the time of writing and most are also free Google Fonts, which means you can use exactly the same type on your website — a big part of looking consistent.
| Heading font | Body font | Feel | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Playfair Display | Lato | Classic, elegant, confident | Psychotherapists, psychologists, established practices |
| Lora | Open Sans | Warm, literary, approachable | Counsellors, person-centred and integrative practices |
| DM Serif Display | DM Sans | Modern, editorial, calm | Group practices, training providers |
| Cormorant Garamond | Montserrat | Refined, gentle, spacious | Coaching-adjacent, somatic and wellbeing practices |
| Libre Baskerville | Roboto | Trustworthy, traditional, clear | Clinical psychology, assessments, older client groups |
| Montserrat (bold) | Nunito | Friendly, rounded, direct | Child and adolescent services, neurodivergence-affirming practices |
| Poppins | Inter | Clean, contemporary, neutral | Online therapy, EMDR training, CPD providers |
| Merriweather | Raleway | Solid, readable, steady | Couples therapy, family therapy |
A few cautions. Script and handwritten fonts look lovely in a logo and are hard to read in a sentence — keep them out of anything longer than three words. Thin weights (Light, Thin) of any font often fail on phone screens, so use Regular or Medium for body text. And avoid novelty fonts entirely; they undermine the sense of a professional, safe practice.
Preview these and more side by side before you commit. Try the font pairings for therapists tool →
Which Canva templates should therapists create?
Build each template once, properly, then duplicate it every time. These eight cover almost everything a therapy practice posts:
- —Square or portrait quote/insight post (1080 x 1350 px for Instagram portrait): one short line of text, generous margins, your logo small in a corner.
- —Tip carousel (1080 x 1350 px, 5–8 slides): cover slide with a clear title, one point per slide, final slide with 'Save this for later' and your website.
- —Story template (1080 x 1920 px): keep text away from the top and bottom 250 px, where the app's interface sits.
- —Availability or announcement post: factual, calm, with space for dates and a link — no countdown graphics.
- —Awareness-day post: a flexible layout where you swap the day's name and one practical idea.
- —Reel cover (1080 x 1920 px, with key text in the central square so it still reads in the profile grid).
- —Workshop or group flyer (A5 or A4 print, with bleed) and a matching social version.
- —Banner set: LinkedIn, Facebook cover and YouTube channel art in one design folder so they update together.
Name templates clearly ('TEMPLATE — Carousel — Tips') and keep them in a dedicated folder. When you're tired at the end of a clinical day, you want to open the right file immediately, not scroll through last year's drafts.
Need a caption to go with the graphic? Browse the free mental health caption bank →
How do I make Canva designs accessible?
- —Contrast: WCAG 2.2 asks for at least 4.5:1 contrast for body text and 3:1 for large text. Pale sage text on a cream background usually fails. Check pairings with a free contrast checker before saving them as brand colours.
- —Size: on a 1080 px wide post, body text below roughly 28–32 px is hard to read on a phone. Headings can comfortably sit at 60 px and above.
- —Amount: keep text on a single graphic short. If it needs more than about 30 words, make it a carousel or put it in the caption.
- —Alt text: Canva images don't carry alt text into Instagram or Facebook, so add it when you post. Both platforms have an alt text field under advanced or accessibility settings.
- —Video: use Canva's captions or burn subtitles into every video. Many people watch on mute, and captions are essential for Deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers.
- —Motion: keep animations gentle. Avoid flashing, fast zooms or strobing transitions, which can be uncomfortable and, in rare cases, unsafe.
- —Imagery: avoid distressing images — people with their head in their hands, broken glass, dark storms. Calm, real, neutral images serve trauma-informed practice better.
Canva doesn't make a therapy practice look amateur. Inconsistency does. A brand kit and eight good templates will do more for your social media than any new font.
Adam Watters, Founder, Psyche Creative
What are the best Canva export settings?
| Output | Canva export setting | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Social posts and carousels | PNG | Crisper text than JPG. Download carousels as separate PNG pages. |
| Photo-heavy social posts | JPG, high quality | Smaller files, fine for photography. |
| Website images | JPG or PNG, then compress | Run through a compressor or convert to WebP before uploading to keep pages fast. |
| Logo for website | SVG (Pro) or PNG with transparent background (Pro) | SVG stays sharp at any size. |
| Leaflets, flyers, posters | PDF Print, crop marks and bleed on | Turn on 'Show print bleed' while designing. Pro accounts can choose a CMYK colour profile. |
| Workshop slides or handouts | PDF Standard | Smaller file size for emailing. |
| Reels, Stories, short videos | MP4 Video, 1080p | Check captions render correctly before posting. |
For anything printed, add 3 mm bleed on every edge and keep text at least 3–5 mm inside the trim line. Most UK printers expect this, and it's the single most common reason home-made leaflets come back with text cut off.
Exact UK print sizes in mm, with bleed, for leaflets, cards and roller banners. See the UK print design sizes cheat sheet →
We design brand identities and reusable Canva template sets for therapy practices, so you can keep posting yourself and still look consistent. See our Graphic Design service →
Frequently asked questions
Is Canva free for therapists?
Canva has a free plan that's enough for basic posts. At the time of writing, the full Brand Kit, transparent backgrounds, SVG export and one-click resizing need Canva Pro or Teams.
What is the best font in Canva for a therapist?
Readable serif and sans-serif pairings work best, such as Lora with Open Sans or Playfair Display with Lato. Avoid script fonts for anything longer than a few words.
Can I make my therapy logo in Canva?
You can, but Canva's licence terms mean logos built from its stock elements can't be trademarked, and template logos are rarely distinctive. It's usually worth having a logo designed once and using Canva to apply it.
What size should therapist Instagram posts be in Canva?
Use 1080 x 1350 px for portrait feed posts and carousels, and 1080 x 1920 px for Stories and Reels. Keep important text away from the top and bottom edges of vertical formats.
How do I export a leaflet from Canva for printing?
Choose PDF Print, tick crop marks and bleed, and design with 'Show print bleed' turned on so backgrounds extend 3 mm past the edge. Pro users can also select a CMYK colour profile.
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.
