Font Pairing for Pins
Two fonts that go together, drawn on a pin in your own words. Pick a mood, then a pair.
Title font + text font
Playfair Display + Source Sans 3
Playfair Display's high-contrast serif gives the title a magazine-cover look. Source Sans 3 is quiet and even, so the smaller lines read easily at pin size.
- Title: Playfair Display Bold · Serif by Claus Eggers Sørensen · SIL Open Font License 1.1
- Text: Source Sans 3 Regular · Sans serif by Paul D. Hunt · SIL Open Font License 1.1
In the Pin Designer, which draws with the fonts already on your device, the nearest style to this title font is Serif, and to the text font Sans.
Quick answer: pair a characterful font for your pin's title with a plain one for everything else. The safest pairing is a serif title over a sans serif text, such as Playfair Display with Source Sans 3. Use two fonts, not more, and keep script fonts away from the words people search for. Pick a mood above to see three pairs drawn on a pin in your own words, then download the pin or copy the font names.
How to use it
- Pick a mood: Elegant, Bold, Friendly, Modern or Handwritten. Each has three pairs.
- Tap a pair, or press Try the next pair, and it is drawn on a 2:3 pin at once.
- Type your own title, second line and website, and choose the colors. The title shrinks to fit in at most three lines, the way it has to on a real pin.
- Download the pin as a picture, or copy the font names with their Google Fonts links to use in your own design app. Copy link keeps the pair, your words and your colors.
What makes two fonts work together
Google Fonts' guide to pairing typefaces puts the whole problem in one sentence: the second font has to be different enough from the first, but not too different. It quotes Jason Santa Maria's rule of thumb: "When in doubt […] pair a serif and a sans serif." The fifteen pairs here follow one of four relationships, and each pair says which:
- Contrast. A serif (or a script) title over a sans serif text. They are different enough to tell apart and never fight. Playfair Display with Source Sans 3 and Caveat with Lato are two examples.
- A display face and a plain one. A font made for a few big words, like Bebas Neue, Anton or Oswald, with a plain sans for the rest. The title gets the personality and the small lines stay readable.
- Relatives. Two fonts from the same designers, such as DM Serif Display with DM Sans, or Archivo Black with Archivo. They share their proportions, so they sit together naturally.
- One family, two weights. Google's guide asks you to try the weights of your first font before adding a second one. Poppins Bold over Poppins Regular, or Inter ExtraBold over Inter Regular, cannot clash.
Fonts on a pin are read small
A pin is seen in a feed on a phone, at a fraction of the size you design it at. That changes the rules. Heavy, simple letters survive being shrunk, while thin and delicate ones turn into a smudge. Tailwind, a Pinterest scheduling company, puts the other rule plainly: "DON'T use script fonts for text containing Pinterest keywords. Remember, Pinterest visual search can't read script fonts!" (Tailwind, October 2020). So in the Handwritten pairs the script is for a short title, and the tool tells you when a script title runs past four words. Put your keyword in the second line, which is set in the plain font. Our guide to the best fonts for Pinterest pins goes further into what survives at thumbnail size.
The fifteen pairs
- Elegant: Playfair Display + Source Sans 3 · Cormorant Garamond + Montserrat · DM Serif Display + DM Sans
- Bold: Bebas Neue + Montserrat · Anton + Roboto · Archivo Black + Archivo
- Friendly: Fredoka + Nunito · Poppins Bold + Poppins Regular · Baloo 2 + Open Sans
- Modern: Space Grotesk + Inter · Oswald + Open Sans · Inter ExtraBold + Inter Regular
- Handwritten: Caveat + Lato · Pacifico + Josefin Sans · Dancing Script + Montserrat
Can I use these fonts for free?
Yes. Every font here is published on Google Fonts under the SIL Open Font License 1.1, which lets you use it in personal and commercial work: pins, blog graphics, printables and products you sell. Each font's category, designer and license come from its record in Google's own google/fonts repository, checked on 28 September 2026. This page serves its own copies of the fonts, so your browser never asks Google for them.
Where these pairs come from
The fifteen pairs are PinPinterest's own choice, a design suggestion, and not a measurement. No one publishes how often a pair is used on Pinterest, so no pair here is called "the most popular". The reasons given for each follow the pairing principles in Google's guide above. The Pin Designer draws with the fonts already on your device rather than these, so each pair also names the Pin Designer's closest built-in style. Our guide to text on a pin covers where to put the words once you have the fonts.