25 Best Fonts for Embroidery Designs

Personalizing items is a way to express individual style and get one-of-a-kind pieces with almost any design imaginable. Among a myriad of customization practices, the one we’re excited about is embroidery.

Although embroidery is widely known as a type of handicraft, nowadays, there’s technical equipment available to achieve colorfully stitched designs without relying solely on manual craftsmanship.

How are on-demand embroidery items created?

With Printful, it’s possible to spark your creativity and create on-demand embroidery products like custom hoodies, t-shirts, hats, tote bags, and more. Once you’ve come up with your embroidery ideas and designed products, we take care of:

• Digitization. We digitize each design to convert it to a format suitable for embroidery.

• Fulfillment. After digitizing your design and receiving an order, our warehouse specialists can fulfill it. Whether it’s clipart or text designs, we fulfill all embroidery orders using embroidery machines that allow precise and speedy item production.

Keep in mind, when choosing embroidery, there are some design guidelines to follow. Read on to learn some tips on how to make custom embroidery designs precise and accurate. 

Requirements for a successful embroidery text design

With the diverse choice of font styles, not all of them work for embroidery designs. Digitizing embroidery requires choosing machine embroidery fonts to make every stitch contribute to a visually stunning, professionally finished piece.

Avoid using super thin or complicated calligraphy fonts. To be legible for embroidery printing, the text has to be at least 0.25″ in height and 0.05″+ thick. The font size can’t be smaller than 36 pt.

To make your font choice easier, we’ve gathered some of the best machine embroidery fonts from different style categories.

Classic and elegant fonts

It’s a good choice to go for classics. Let’s explore some of the most timeless and popular fonts for embroidery—reliable picks to achieve an elegant and classic look.

Roboto

Roboto is a popular classic font that offers multiple styles, widths, and weights of the original Roboto typeface. From Condensed style with narrowed letters offering a classic and sophisticated look, to different serif styles that look elegant and sleek—it’s a font that offers versatility. Test this font on a Vintage Cap or other items in our catalog, and we promise the results won’t disappoint.

Fun fact: Google developed it as the system font for Android devices.

Source: Printful, Roboto Serif Black

Gilroy

Gilroy is a modern sans-serif font known for its clean allure and geometric lines. It comes in various weights, such as medium, bold, and black, offering versatility for different design needs. Whether in caps or not, the balanced proportions of letters give a contemporary and stylish look to any embroidered words or numbers.

Source: Printful, Gilroy Bold

Gill Sans

Gill Sans is a relatively old sans-serif font created in the 30s. The original Gill Sans typeface’s main characteristics are sharp and clean lines without any excess detailing to maintain its sleek look. That’s why it’s one of the most loved fonts for embroidery designs that provide precise results. However, there are other variations of this font style, such as bold and ultra-bold versions that you can experiment with on your embroidery designs. 

Proxima Nova

It’s a trendy font on the web. Proxima Nova appears in various logo, website, and app designs; however, it’s a classic that’ll look just as good when chosen for surface embroidery. In addition to the font’s clean and neutral aesthetics, it has relatively thin and compact letters, making it a suitable embroidery font for quotes or other longer text designs.

Source: Printful, Proxima Nova

Modern fonts

Modern fonts offer a unique approach compared to traditional typefaces. From contrasting line weights to decorative curves—there are various modern embroidery font types to choose from. Let’s explore some of them.

Florensans

A font for your one-of-a-kind embroidery designs—Florensans. It’s an all-caps display font that’s modern and has an original appeal thanks to its decorative ligatures on certain letter combinations like “re,” “ri,” “lo,” and more. If you’re opting for a chic look to upgrade your embroidery text designs, you should try out this font on an Unstructured Terry Cloth Bucket Hat, a hoodie, or a t-shirt.

Futura Now

Futura Now is a modern typography sans-serif font—a newer interpretation of the original Futura font. Thanks to the different weights and styles of the typeface, this is one of the best fonts for embroidery designs as it can adapt to various applications. What makes it great is its sharp and clean shapes of letters that’ll provide you with outstanding custom embroidery items. See the Futura Now Headline Black in action on our Faux Leather Bomber Jacket.

Magiona Display

Magiona Display is a modern typography that, on its own, will serve as the main stand-alone design element. It’s a decorative font that sets itself apart with its bold decorative strokes and modern letter designs.

Test it out on statement apparel items like the Unisex Sherpa Denim Jacket to create a fashionable wardrobe staple decorated with a cool embroidered design.

Bely Display

Another decorative display font that adds flair to any custom embroidery design. Bely Display is unique with its contrasting display weight and angled apertures on enclosed or partially enclosed letters like “o,” “e,” or “c.” This font provides a fresh and trendy style that’ll make an impression when used in embroidery typography designs.

Source: Printful, Bely Display

Moret

Moret is a serif font inspired by the 20th-century European sign painting. The typical serif font characteristics involve small brackets, tails, or other additional elements to the tops and bottoms of a letter to achieve a traditional and classic appearance.

Moret is one of the fonts to perfectly demonstrate it. It’s a traditional yet versatile font type that can be used formally and casually, making it a timeless embroidery font choice for various design aesthetics.

Source: Printful, Moret

Vintage fonts

Some might argue that vintage is the new modern. Regardless—vintage-inspired decorative fonts add a chic touch to embroidery typography.

Seventies

Seventies is a calligraphy typeface that was designed in 2015 and is inspired by, that’s right—the 70s. Its expressive cursive font style stands out with its bold and bubbly letters and will look groovy on smaller and bigger embroidery applications. Just look how rad it looks on a Large Eco Tote!

Source: Printful, Seventies

Candice

If you’re into a vintage vibe, a font that really encapsulates another nostalgic and lively aesthetic of the 70s is Candice.

Similarly to the Seventies font, it has bold letters with groovy swirls that’ll create an eye-catching and enchanting appeal to an embroidery text design. Use it to design clothing or accessories with nostalgic quotes, or embrace the rebirth of vintage style and combine it with modern phrase typography.

Arnold Boecklin

A vintage font that appeared 120 years ago and was inspired by the Art Nouveau art movement. Arnold Boecklin is a decorative font that was once used in books, but currently, it evokes nostalgia in modern poster designs, album and TV show titles, apparel applications, and more. If you’re looking for an ornamental embroidery font that’ll be the main element of a design, try Arnold Boecklin.

Bold fonts

Bold fonts won’t go unnoticed. They are suitable for a wide range of applications and are the best embroidery fonts that ensure readability from a distance. Keep scrolling to find out our favorite bold fonts for embroidery.

Antique Olive Nord

Antique Olive Nord is one of the sans-serif fonts that’s known for its bold and consistent stroke widths, as well as the clean and structured letter design. Those are the typical characteristics of block fonts that are excellent choices when looking for bold embroidery fonts.

If you choose this font style, try using all the space provided for an embroidery placement. By doing so, we guarantee that your designs will come out sharp and will make an impression.

Helvetica Now Display Black

Helvetica is a widely known typeface with various font styles, such as Helvetica Now. It’s a font family that delivers a clean and effortless appearance and is versatile in its usage.

Either for decorative text elements, logo embroidery, or another form of application, this is the right font to create a strong visual identity and high readability, all while ensuring a sleek and timeless appearance.

Source: Printful, Helvetica Now Display Black

Rammeto One

Rammeto One is a display font that has more unique letter shapes in comparison to the previously discussed fonts. It resembles fonts used in cartoons due to its bold and robust letterforms that have tiny apertures on enclosed letters like “O”, “D”, or “A”. It’s a suitable font if you’re trying to achieve a more casual and playful design.

Source: Printful, Rammeto One

Frutiger Next 

Typography designs aren’t limited to just words, phrases, and quotes. Numbers are also a type of text design that can change their appearance based on the font that’s used for it. Frutiger Next is a font family that comes in different weights and is a new interpretation of the well-known Frutiger typeface. 

If you’re specifically looking for a bold font, we recommend the Frutiger Next Black, which you can also see on the Unisex Muscle Shirt design. It’s a great bold font for both word and number designs that’ll exude a strong presence and will stand out prominently. 

Source: Printful, Frutiger Next Black 

Minimal

Minimal embroidery fonts, with their sleek and simple letterforms, are amazing for creating a clean and trendy aesthetic. Here are some of our favorites.

Unica One

If you’re trying to achieve a minimalistic embroidery typography design, Unica One is the best font for that. With its slim and consistent lines used on letters, it’s capable of delivering excellent results with an emphasis on simplicity and elegance. This font will be suitable for small-scale embroidery to achieve a seamless look, but it’ll look just as good on a larger embroidery on the back of a t-shirt.
Source: Printful, Unica One

Monsterrat

Monsterrat is another popular minimalistic font with a simple design and subtle embellishments. Thanks to its characteristics, it translates well onto surface embroidery and provides excellent results. Choose either all-caps or lowercase letters to achieve a balanced and minimalistic typography design.

Source: Printful, Monsterrat

Pilcrow Rounded

Pilcrow Rounded is a font that can be considered minimal. However, it does have a unique touch to it. When compared to Unica One and Montserrat, instead of sharp, straight lines, this font has implemented rounded letterforms to achieve a soft and modern appearance. It’s an exceptional font choice if you opt for a design with a friendly and inviting vibe.

Source: Printful, Pilcrow Rounded

Alata

Alata is another font suitable for simple and minimal designs. The font was inspired by epigraphic Greek mono-line letters, hence the thin and delicate features. It’s a font style you can play with by choosing either uppercase or lowercase letters, as well as adjusting the letter spacing.

Thanks to its clean lines, the font is legible for both smaller and bigger designs of text, numbers, or Roman numerals.

Source: Printful, Alata

Script/Handwritten fonts

Script fonts are based on the stroke of calligraphy and handwriting and are known for their decorative, cursive elements. However, calligraphy fonts are one of the most complicated font styles for embroidery designs. Because of the ornamental swirls and other small details on the letters, it’s a challenge to render them accurately when using an embroidery thread.

Not all script fonts aren’t suitable for embroidery. There are various handwritten fonts for embroidery that can captivate different aesthetics you might go for. From relaxed and organic handwriting font styles to more elegant and decorative styles that’ll embody the same essence as a calligraphy font—there are various script fonts to choose from to accentuate your embroidery designs.

Architects Daughter

Architects Daughter exemplifies a handwritten script font that has thin strokes and an architectural vibe to it. Whether you’re trying to design custom t-shirts, hoodies, or other apparel items, this font will be an exceptional choice to achieve a unique yet effortless look.

PS If you’re specifically looking for t-shirt embroidery fonts, you might be interested in reading our post about the best fonts for t-shirts.

Source: Printful, Architects Daughter

Blog Script

Blog Script is also one of the cursive fonts that resemble handwriting, as the letters are all connected in a flowing manner. This font will give a harmonious appeal to any typography design, complementing a wide range of aesthetics you might be aiming for.

 Source: Printful, Blog Script

Chalk Brush

The name of this font says it all. Chalk Brush is an uppercase font style that’s inspired by the writing on the chalkboard. It’s ideal if you’re trying to achieve a casual and playful look for your designs, and it’ll look exceptionally good on both children’s and adult apparel items.

Source: Printful, Chalk Brush 

Thirsty Script

Thirsty Script is a typeface that mixes retro and modern elements in its composition. Although it’s considered a handwritten script font, it has some characteristics of calligraphy, such as deliberate strokes and swirls. So, if you’re going for a more graceful design, Thirsty Script is a perfect font choice that has a more formal calligraphy-like touch than the previously mentioned typefaces.

 Source: Printful, Thirsty Script 

Ed’s Market Script

Ed’s Market is a font family that’s fully hand-lettered, meaning no variation of the typeface was crafted using a computer. With decorative swashes, ligatures, and other ornaments similar to Thirsty Script, it also resembles the formal and artistic essence of a calligraphy font. However, because of its detailing, it’s advisable to choose larger embroidery placements and use all of the negative space for best results.

Source: Printful, Ed’s Market Script 

Choose the stitch-perfect font for your design

We went over some of the best fonts for embroidery and, hopefully, made your choice easier. You can test them all out on our Design Maker Illustrator and see the mockup versions of your embroidery designs.

Tip: Don’t be afraid of mixing different fonts to create unique and prominent typography designs.

May your designs inspire others!

Read next:

• How to Design a Logo for Embroidery: 7 Essential Things to Note
• Best Embroidery Products To Sell
• 25 Creative Embroidery Ideas