Good pairings combine contrast (a different style or weight for headings) with harmony (similar proportions or mood). The simplest reliable formula: a characterful heading font plus a neutral, highly readable body font.
The Quick Brown Fox
Great typography makes reading easy and pleasant for everyone.
Playfair Display + Source Sans 3
Editorial and elegant: a high-contrast serif headline over a clean humanist body.
The Quick Brown Fox
Great typography makes reading easy and pleasant for everyone.
Montserrat + Merriweather
Modern geometric headings with a sturdy, readable serif for long text.
The Quick Brown Fox
Great typography makes reading easy and pleasant for everyone.
Oswald + Open Sans
Condensed, punchy headlines with a neutral body: great for news and dashboards.
The Quick Brown Fox
Great typography makes reading easy and pleasant for everyone.
Lato + Lora
Friendly sans headings with a warm, contemporary serif.
The Quick Brown Fox
Great typography makes reading easy and pleasant for everyone.
Raleway + Merriweather
Thin, stylish headings balanced by a robust serif.
The Quick Brown Fox
Great typography makes reading easy and pleasant for everyone.
Abril Fatface + Lato
A bold display face for impact, with a calm sans for everything else.
The Quick Brown Fox
Great typography makes reading easy and pleasant for everyone.
Roboto Slab + Roboto
A superfamily pairing: slab headings and matching sans body.
The Quick Brown Fox
Great typography makes reading easy and pleasant for everyone.
Cormorant Garamond + Proza Libre
Luxurious serif headings with a humanist sans: weddings, fashion, hospitality.
The Quick Brown Fox
Great typography makes reading easy and pleasant for everyone.
Space Grotesk + Inter
Tech and product: quirky grotesque headings with an ultra-legible UI font.
The Quick Brown Fox
Great typography makes reading easy and pleasant for everyone.
DM Serif Display + DM Sans
A matched pair designed together: polished and versatile.
The Quick Brown Fox
Great typography makes reading easy and pleasant for everyone.
Bebas Neue + Montserrat
All-caps poster headlines with a geometric body.
The Quick Brown Fox
Great typography makes reading easy and pleasant for everyone.
Fraunces + Manrope
Soft, characterful serif headlines with a crisp modern sans.
How to pair fonts
- Pick one star. Let the heading font carry the personality; keep the body font quiet.
- Contrast categories. Serif headings with sans body (or the reverse) is the easiest win.
- Match x-heights. Fonts with similar lowercase heights look comfortable together.
- Stick to two. A third font is rarely needed: use weights and sizes instead.
- Test with real content at real sizes, on mobile too.
Superfamilies
Families designed together (Roboto + Roboto Slab, DM Serif Display + DM Sans, IBM Plex Sans + Serif + Mono) pair safely because they share proportions.