Best Practices: Adding Fonts to Your Website

Learn how to add web fonts the right way with modern best practices for performance, typography, caching, and user experience.

December 15, 2025

Best Practices: Adding Fonts to Your Website

How to load web fonts the right way (performance, clarity, and control)

Typography does more than make your site look good — it impacts readability, brand presence, load time, and even SEO. But the act of adding fonts to a website involves more nuance than dropping a <link> tag into your <head>.

This guide walks through modern best practices for loading and managing web fonts so you get fast performance, visual stability, and full design flexibility.

1. Choose Fonts Wisely (Less Is More)

Every font file adds weight to your page. That means:

  • More HTTP requests
  • More time before text is visually “final”
  • More potential layout shifts

General guideline:
Use 1–2 font families and only the weights and styles you truly need.

Example weights you might keep:

  • 300 (light)
  • 400 (regular)
  • 500 (medium)
  • 700 (bold)
  • Optional: italic variants if used in UI or editorial content

Avoid shipping full libraries “just in case.” Intentional choices here pay off everywhere else.

2. Self-Host Your Fonts When Possible

Self-hosting your font files (WOFF2) gives you:

  • Faster load times
  • Better caching and control
  • More consistent privacy/compliance
  • Fewer render-blocking DNS lookups

In most modern builds, self-hosting is preferred over third-party providers like Google Fonts or other font CDNs.

3. Use Separate @font-face Blocks by Weight & Style

Browsers match fonts based on:

  • font-family
  • font-weight
  • font-style

Declaring a @font-face block per variation is both idiomatic and flexible:

@font-face {
  font-family: 'MyFont';
  src: url('/fonts/MyFont-Regular.woff2') format('woff2');
  font-weight: 400;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}

@font-face {
  font-family: 'MyFont';
  src: url('/fonts/MyFont-Bold.woff2') format('woff2');
  font-weight: 700;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}

Then anywhere in your CSS:

h1 {
  font-family: 'MyFont';
  font-weight: 700;
}

This pattern is clean, predictable, and stable across all layout engines.

4. Prefer WOFF2 for Modern Browsers

The most performant and compressed web font format is WOFF2.

Unless you support very old browsers, you can safely avoid WOFF/TTF/EOT and keep your CSS simple:

@font-face {
  font-family: 'MyFont';
  src: url('/fonts/MyFont-Regular.woff2') format('woff2');
  font-weight: 400;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}

Fewer formats means less complexity and a smaller surface area for bugs.

5. Use font-display for Better UX

font-display controls how the browser handles text before a web font loads.

Common values:

  • swap — instant text using a fallback font, then swap to the web font when ready
  • optional — ultra-performant; the browser may skip loading the font on poor connections
  • block — hides text until the font loads (can hurt UX and Core Web Vitals)

Recommended defaults:

  • Use swap for most body and UI text
  • Consider optional for less-critical fonts on content-heavy pages

Example:

@font-face {
  font-family: 'MyFont';
  src: url('/fonts/MyFont-Regular.woff2') format('woff2');
  font-weight: 400;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}

6. Preload Critical Fonts

Preload only the fonts used above the fold — usually:

  • Body regular (400)
  • Headline bold (700)
<link
  rel="preload"
  href="/fonts/MyFont-Bold.woff2"
  as="font"
  type="font/woff2"
  crossorigin
/>

Overusing preload can actually hurt performance. Be selective and focus on the initial viewport.

If your fonts are served from a different domain or static asset host, remember to:

  • Add the appropriate CORS headers
  • Use crossorigin on your <link> tags

7. Build a Smart Fallback Stack

Fallback fonts matter during the “swap” period and when fonts fail to load.

Use system UI stacks for clean fallbacks:

:root {
  --sans-stack: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont,
                'Segoe UI', Roboto, 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif;
}

body {
  font-family: 'MyFont', var(--sans-stack);
}

This helps reduce layout shift and preserves legibility even before web fonts load.

Where supported, you can also experiment with font-size-adjust to keep the perceived size consistent between fallback and final fonts:

body {
  font-family: 'MyFont', var(--sans-stack);
  line-height: 1.5;
  font-size-adjust: 0.5;
}

8. Subset Fonts for Large Projects

If your typeface includes many scripts (Latin + Cyrillic + Greek + symbols, etc.), consider breaking them into smaller subsets, each with a unicode-range.

@font-face {
  font-family: 'MyFont';
  src: url('/fonts/MyFont-Latin.woff2') format('woff2');
  font-weight: 400;
  font-style: normal;
  unicode-range: U+000-5FF;
  font-display: swap;
}

Benefits:

  • Smaller download sizes per user
  • Browsers only load the subsets they actually need

This is especially helpful for global sites with traffic from many regions.

9. Consider Variable Fonts

Variable fonts allow a single file to contain multiple weights or styles:

@font-face {
  font-family: 'MyFont VF';
  src: url('/fonts/MyFont-Variable.woff2') format('woff2');
  font-weight: 300 800;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}

Then in your CSS:

h1 {
  font-family: 'MyFont VF', system-ui, sans-serif;
  font-weight: 700;
}

strong {
  font-weight: 600;
}

small {
  font-weight: 300;
}

Benefits:

  • One request instead of many
  • Smooth interpolation between weights (great for animations)
  • Flexible design without bloating your asset list

Just note: if you truly only use a single weight and style, a static font may still be lighter in total bytes.

10. Avoid Icon Fonts — Use SVG Instead

Icon fonts have several drawbacks:

  • Accessibility issues (icons are technically text glyphs)
  • Dependence on font loading to display icons correctly
  • Inconsistent rendering and alignment across platforms

Modern best practice is to use SVG icons instead:

  • Inline SVGs for flexible styling and animation
  • SVG sprite sheets for reusability and caching

You’ll get sharper icons, better accessibility, and fewer font-related headaches.

11. Cache Fonts Aggressively

On your server or CDN, set your font responses with a long cache lifetime:

Cache-Control: public, max-age=31536000, immutable

Then version your file names when you update fonts:

  • /fonts/MyFont-Regular.v1.woff2
  • /fonts/MyFont-Regular.v2.woff2

This lets browsers keep fonts cached for months while still allowing you to roll out updates safely.

12. Reduce Layout Shifts (CLS)

Web fonts can cause layout jumps if not handled properly. To minimize Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS):

  • Use fallbacks with similar metrics to your web fonts
  • Preload only the fonts used in the initial viewport
  • Set explicit line heights rather than relying on defaults
  • Avoid design patterns where text dramatically changes size when the web font loads

Good typography is as much about stability and predictability as it is about style.

Conclusion

Fonts are one of the most visible parts of your brand — but they’re also one of the most common performance bottlenecks.

By following these best practices, you can:

  • Keep your site fast
  • Ensure clean, consistent typography
  • Reduce visual shifts and layout jumps
  • Improve accessibility and user experience
  • Maintain full control over your design system

Whether you’re building a simple marketing site or a complex application, the way you load fonts matters. Apply these principles and your visitors (and your Core Web Vitals) will thank you.

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